David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 13]

by Wings of Hell (lit)

  Military victories owe as much to the unsung rear-echelon logisticians and staff officers who plan them as to the heroes who fight them. But when something goes wrong with those plans, it’s the common infantryman who has to make things work.

  And the landing on Haulover was unopposed by the enemy who, with great patience and cunning, lurked silently in prepared positions for the right moment to strike.

  “Whew, dusty out there!” General Carano exclaimed as he stepped into the prefabricated hut that was headquarters for the Fourteenth Air Wing at Naval Air Station George Gay. Captain Ronald Hahley was in command of the wing. A grizzled, no-nonsense officer, Hahley knew his business and he did not like to be interfered with in the transaction of that business. But out of respect for Brigadier Ted Sturgeon of Thirty-fourth FIST and Brigadier Jack Sparen of Twenty-sixth FIST, he had asked the corps commander to resolve a disagreement he had with the Marines.

  Carano slapped dust off his tunic. “Never seen a landing go as smoothly as this one, gentlemen!” In two days the entire XVIII Corps had been landed on Haulover, bases and depots established, probes against the enemy initiated. “Hey, sit down, sit down.” He laughed and waved the three officers back into their chairs. They had snapped to attention when he entered the hut. “No need for that here! What’s up?”

  The three were silent for a moment. Captain Hahley glanced at the two Marines, who nodded that he should proceed. “Well, sir, we disagree on the dispersal of our aircraft.”

  “So? You can’t resolve that among yourselves?”

  “No, we cannot, sir. Now I have ninety-six Raptors in my wing. As I understand the situation, the greatest threat we have here is from enemy ground attacks. I’ve seen all the vids and attended the briefings, just as all of us have, and I see the greatest threat to my aircraft coming from enemy infiltrators.” He shrugged and glanced again at the two Marines. “So, I want to keep all my machines on the aprons where they can be guarded at all times against sabotage.”

  “Ted? Jack?”

  “Sir—” Brigadier Sparen began.

  “It’s Pat, Jack. But please continue.”

  “Sir, as you know, each FIST has its organic air complement consisting of ten Raptors and ten hoppers. We Marines, well, we like to keep our toys close and under our control and we like to plan for everything to go wrong. We think Captain Hahley has a good point, but we prefer to protect our aircraft from all eventualities and therefore we want revetments constructed to accommodate our Raptors.”

  Sturgeon leaned forward. “Pat, we understand Captain Hahley’s points, no disrespect intended toward him. He has almost one hundred aircraft to protect, and putting them all in revetments would require a tremendous engineering effort that might be used more effectively elsewhere. We understand that. Also, putting all his machines in one place makes security a lot easier to handle. But as Jack has pointed out, we Marines like to take all precautions. We only have forty aircraft in our respective inventories and if we can get the revetments built, we can guarantee their security without downgrading our own mission capability.”

  “Ron?” Carano turned to Captain Hahley.

  The wing commander sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “If that’s what they want…”

  Carano turned to the Marines and said, “Then do it. I’ll have the chief of engineers get with you two immediately. He can build your revetments by the end of the day.” Carano slapped both knees, sending small clouds of dust into the air. “Okay, gentlemen, good work. I need to know right away when there are problems like this. You did good by not sitting on this one. I’ll see you all at the 1700 briefing. I’m off now, fellas, to, to”—he laughed—“breathe another hundred grams of this goddamned dust!” He stood and stretched. “Or, as Grandma Carano used to say, ‘We’ve all gotta eat a peck o’ dirt before we die.’”

  After making the introductions in his hastily established headquarters, General Carano asked Ensign Daly to walk with his party for a while, during which Daly gave the three flag officers a precise briefing on everything that had transpired on Haulover up to that time. “And, sir, let me say, are we ever glad to see you here now!”

  “You put your finger on the problem, Ensign Daly.” Carano extended his hand. “Fine job! Damned fine job! Now, you mentioned some civilian dignitaries, Ensign. Tell me, are they going to be a problem?”

  “Yes, sir, they are, but I think you have the, uh, horsepower to deal with them.”

  “They gave you a hard time, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, sir, but you have to understand, they’re businessmen, and what’s happened here is, well, not good for their business, and far beyond their ability to handle. They’re concerned about what a major war on Haulover will cost them, has already cost them. Haulover’s a rough place but many of these people have their families here with them, and they’re understandably concerned about safety. A guy who’s worried about his wife and kids may not think too clearly while he’s waiting for the cavalry to arrive.”

  “Ensign, you look on both sides of the coin, don’t you?” Carano said. His remark received agreeing nods from Sturgeon and McKillan. “I like that in a man. Before I send you back to the flagship and on to Camp Basilone, I want you to come with me on a little visit to these civilian dignitaries. Will you do that for me?”

  “Yes, sir, absolutely! But, sir”—Daly looked imploringly at Sturgeon—“I think I’d like to stay here, until this is over. I’m speaking only for myself, of course, not the other men on the team. We were in at the start, and I want to be in at the finish.”

  Carano raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sturgeon, who nodded very slightly. He thought for a moment. “Well, you and your men have been through a rough time here, Ensign. Your job here is done, you know. I don’t know.” He rubbed his chin. “Okay, I’ll find something for you to do. If nothing else, I may still need your level of recon.” Daly broke into a big grin. “Now, Doc.” Carano turned to General McKillan. “Return to the flagship and tell Admiral Chandler to commence landing the corps. I want the CO of that MP battalion to report to me as soon as he gets here. Ted, you and Ensign Daly jump into that Dragon with me and we’ll go see our civilian counterparts and get some things straight around this place. Now tell us about the big cheeses who are in charge of things here. I’ve asked them to meet us at the planet administrator’s office.”

  “That’s Spilk Mullilee, sir. He’s just that, an administrator. The real power here is Smelt Miner, who’s running the mining and smelting operations, the main business on Haulover. Then there are Agro Herder, agribusiness; Rayl Rhodes, runs the rail system; and Manuel Factor, small-time manufacturer. They follow Miner’s lead. Get any one of those guys by himself, though, and he can be a pretty easy person to deal with. Put Miner in his place and the others will cooperate with you.”

  “Excellent! Gentlemen, shall we mount out and eliminate the threat to our rear? While we’re on our way over there, Ensign, let’s discuss your future duties here on Haulover.”

  It was all General Carano could do to suppress a double-take when he saw Spilk Mullilee wearing a chartreuse suit, magenta shirt, and black suede calf-high boots.

  “General! How dee-lighted we are to see you!” Mullilee virtually ran around the conference table, hand outstretched. The hand was damp and limp.

  “It’s about goddamned time!” a stout man rumbled. Carano knew from the files he’d read on the way from Arsenault that he was Smelt Miner, but he ignored the man, for the moment.

  “Mr. Mullilee, pleased to meet you. This officer is Brigadier Ted Sturgeon, commanding Thirty-fourth Fleet Initial Strike Team. You already know Ensign Daly—”

  “Izzat all you brought with you, General, a goddamned FIST?” Miner almost shouted.

  “Sir, I have brought an entire corps, the XVIII, consisting of the Fifteenth Armored Division, the Twenty-fourth Medium Infantry Division, the Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Division, Twenty-sixth and Thirty-fourth FISTS, the Eighth and Fourteenth Air Wings—with nin
ety-six A8E Raptors to each wing—and all the naval vessels required to transport and support those units in combat. In addition, the XXX Corps is en route with the best weapon the Confederation has, that is, General Anders Aguinaldo. When he gets here he will assume overall command of this campaign. Until then, I am the senior Confederation officer in this quadrant of Human Space.

  “Now, I have a lot to do. The XVIII Corps is landing as we speak and my time is short. Please be seated.”

  “Well, goddammit, General, tell us what you are going to do!” Miner bellowed, his fleshy cheeks swollen with outrage.

  “That is why I am here, Mr. Miner. Please be seated.” Miner’s face registered surprise that Carano knew who he was, because he’d not yet introduced himself. “Now, gentlemen, here is the plan. To start, you and every civilian on this planet are now my responsibility. From this moment forward all of Haulover is declared to be under martial law—”

  “Goddammit!” Miner roared while his colleagues blanched. “You can’t do that!”

  “Mr. Miner, do not presume to tell me my duty. From today until this campaign is over, every area on this planet that is under our control, starting with Sky City and Beach Spaceport, is under a dusk-to-dawn curfew.”

  “This is unprecedented, sir!” Mullilee gasped, his normally sallow complexion now ashen.

  “This is an outrage!” Miner screamed. “I will not tolerate—”

  “It is not without precedent, Mr. Planet Administrator. My judge advocate will be here shortly and he will explain the legalities of establishing and enforcing martial law.

  “As for you, Mr. Miner, I want you to sit in that chair and keep your mouth shut. If you do not, I will have Ensign Daly place you under arrest, and I will transfer you to my flagship, where you will be interned until the campaign is over. Is that clear? That applies to every citizen, gentlemen. Right now, a battalion of military police is landing at Beach Spaceport. Their commanding officer will visit you soon. He will be responsible for establishing and enforcing military law as well as for the physical security of Sky City. He has the authority to arrest and detain anyone who violates the terms of the martial law I am now establishing.” He dug into a cargo pocket and distributed crystals to the civilians. “Promulgate this information to everyone, gentlemen. I will hold you personally responsible for informing the citizens of the terms and conditions of this state of martial law.”

  The corps staff judge advocate and Civil Affairs officers had written the orders days ago. Miner looked as if he’d been poleaxed, puffing his cheeks in and out and breathing heavily.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Miner?” Brigadier Sturgeon asked gently. Miner nodded.

  “Now, gentlemen, within the limits established by my authority, you are free to pursue your ordinary business. But be aware of the fact that, to assist my troops in their mission, I have the authority to commandeer all equipment and personnel from your operations that I need. I have army engineers coming down from orbit even as we speak. Their officers will get with your engineers and arrange whatever support you can give them.

  “Gentlemen, this world is in a state of emergency, a state of war.” Carano emphasized each word carefully. “You should all know that by now. We must work together to defeat this enemy. The alternative is the complete destruction of you, your families, everything on this world that you have worked so hard to attain. You should all be familiar by now with what happened on the world known as Kingdom. Brigadier Sturgeon was there. He can tell you. You do not want what happened to the Kingdomites to happen to you. And let me tell you now, gentlemen, you have Ensign Daly and his men to thank for your hides, because they saw what was coming and called in the cavalry.”

  “S-sir?” Manuel Factor said. “Would you, can you, sir, tell us, um, what your plan is?”

  “Mr. Factor, I’d be happy to do that, but briefly. First, I am going to secure Sky City and prepare accommodations for the XXX Corps. Next, I will deploy my maneuver elements to find and fix the enemy. By ‘fixing’ I mean establish a line of resistance and hold him where he is so that when XXX Corps arrives our combined forces can apply overwhelming military power and destroy him. Gentlemen, he is beatable. Brigadier Sturgeon can testify to that. And we’re going to beat him again, this time for good.

  “One final thing, gentlemen. You all know Ensign Daly here. You will get to know him much better in the future. He is my aide-de-camp, and henceforth when he speaks, he speaks with my authority.” Carano had the authority to keep Daly on Haulover, Daly had seen the Skinks and knew the ground, and Carano wanted him close by at all times so he could take advantage of that knowledge.

  After General Carano had left the civilian bosses, Miner recovered his composure enough to curse loudly and declare, “I’m contacting corporate headquarters! We have contacts at Fargo. By God, I’ll burn the hide off that tin soldier—”

  “Smelt!” Spilk Mullilee brushed a hand tiredly across his forehead. “Will you kindly shut the fuck up? You heard what the man said. Why do you have to always be such an asshole? If you oppose or obstruct General Carano in any way, Smelt, I swear, I’ll get that military police commander to arrest you.”

  An aide rushed into the conference room. “Gentlemen! There are—” He was shoved aside by three soldiers in combat gear.

  “Howdy, gentlemen. I’m Colonel Rene Raggel, Seventh Military Police Battalion. I want you to meet battalion Sergeant Major Steiner and Senior Sergeant Puella Queege, the best pistol shot in all of Human Space! We’re here to enforce the law!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “All right, Mr. Daly, fill me in on the enemy situation,” General Carano said when they reached his headquarters.

  Ensign Daly withdrew a crystal from a pocket and held it up. “I have some visuals.” A lieutenant colonel took the crystal from Daly and inserted it into a vid projector, then handed him a control clicker. “We inserted two minnies into each of the assigned underground complexes.” He nodded to the 2-D display that came up. “Due to time constraints, we weren’t able to examine the complexes as thoroughly as we did the first one we reconned, but we saw enough to be reasonably sure that each of them is similar in size and arrangement to the first.” Daly clicked through images labeled with the coordinates of the complex being shown. A corner of each display also displayed a schematic of the complex, with a you-are-here icon to show where within the complex the images had been taken.

  “Is all the data from the minnie recons on that crystal?” Carano asked.

  “Yes, sir. It also has images from outside the complexes.”

  Carano gestured, Show me. On the third 2-D image, one of the staff officers gave out a quickly cut-off laugh.

  “Yes, Colonel?” Carano asked, as everybody looked at the colonel.

  “S-sir! Mr. Daly, could you play that sequence from the beginning again? I mean, the game.”

  “Yes, sir.” Daly clicked back to the beginning of the image that the colonel had choked on.

  This time the colonel didn’t cut off his delighted laugh. “Sir, I guess this demonstrates that there are certain universalities among sentient species. That”—he nodded at the display—“looks almost exactly like baseball.”

  “Baseball?” Carano asked. He looked around. Blank looks everywhere.

  “Baseball, sir. It was a popular sport on many parts of Earth during the centuries around the turn of the millennium.”

  Carano shook his head. “Baseball indeed.” He nodded at Daly. “Proceed, Ensign.”

  “Thank you, sir. Sir, all the hard intelligence we gathered is on that crystal. I have only one thing to add; we estimate that there are no fewer than two hundred thousand Skinks located in those complexes.”

  A palpable hush fell over the room at those words.

  “Two hundred thousand,” Carano repeated.

  “Or more. Yes, sir.”

  Carano twitched his eyebrows up and back down. “Those are long odds against us,” he said. “But, on the other occasions Confederation fo
rces have met the Skinks, they’ve gone against heavy odds, and come out the victors. If we plan right, and fight hard, I don’t see any reason this time will turn out differently.” He shot a look at Daly and added, “Don’t say it.”

  “Say what, sir?” Daly asked blandly. There was no way that, in this company, he would say, “But those other times, the Skinks faced Marines.”

  Carano gave him a curt nod, and turned to the lieutenant colonel who had popped the crystal into the vid projector. “Make copies of that and distribute them. Then, gentlemen,” he said to his staff at large, “get busy making plans. I’ll have my commander’s-intent for you shortly.”

  Lieutenant General Carano swore once he was alone. Then he began making his commander’s-intent plans for offensive operations against the Skinks.

  Estimate two hundred thousand plus enemy planetside, the Force Recon commander had said. The Surveillance and Radar Division on the recently arrived CNSS Grandar Bay, which was reputed to have the best analysts in the surface surveillance business, said there were possibly more than the five known Skink cave complexes closer to Sky City.

  And Carano’s XVIII Corps only had five army divisions and four Marine FISTs. Fewer than ninety thousand troops—he was outnumbered by more than two to one. And military doctrine sanctified by centuries of repetition said an attacking force needed to outnumber dug-in defenders three to one to be able to carry the day.

  Well, something better than four thousand of the troops of XVIII Corps were Marines. Unlike some army generals who had no use for them, Carano saw the Marines as force magnifiers; he estimated the four FISTs he had, even though they comprised little more than four thousand Marines, gave him fighting power equivalent to another medium infantry division of twenty thousand men, possibly more. But there was no way his force could mount a simultaneous assault on all the known Skink positions and expect to win more than one or two of them. He wasn’t about to throw away his men’s lives that way. But even attacking and clearing the Skink bases one at a time was a risky proposition with the number of troops he had. He’d have to maintain a sizeable reserve, and position sizeable blocking forces to stop a possible Skink counterattack mounted against his clearing operations.