Hell's Faire

by John Ringo

  He'd stayed in Army J-3 then transferred to the Asheville Corps when it became obvious the only "plans" they had were survival.

  Asheville was a tough case. The five divisions in its Line had all sustained hundreds of days of combat. With the exception of some of the fortress cities on the plains, Asheville had probably had the toughest fight of all. There were at least three "easy" approaches to the city and the Posleen had hit it, hard, after each of the main landing waves. Landers, C-Decs and Lampreys, had managed to brave the Planetary Defense Center and even land inside the defenses. Probing attacks, really just the odd God King that either didn't know any better or got a scale up its butt, were a constant problem.

  So the units that were actually in the line, usually three of the five divisions, got very little rest and virtually no training. And the two divisions that were out of the line tended to take that fact as permission to just fuck off. That was part of the rationale for replacement and two thirds of the time away from the line was specifically designated as "refit and refresh." But what they were supposed to do with the rest of their time was train. Improve the individual skills of the personnel, run the officers through "tactical exercises without troops" and do small unit tactical training.

  What they did, instead, all of the divisions, was fill in the blocks on their paperwork and let their units fuck off.

  This had become obvious at least a year before when a small Posleen force had taken a position on Butler Mountain and used it for intermittent harassing fire on the support forces. First a battalion, then a brigade, and finally an entire division of the "rest and refit" units had been sent forward to try to dislodge the Posleen force that was not much larger than a company. The God King in charge was tenacious and smart, to the point of rebuilding the defense positions and occupying them, but it shouldn't have taken a division to dislodge him. And if any of the other Posleen in the area had conceived of reinforcing him, Asheville might have fallen.

  The problem was that the Line units had become specialists at running their automated guns and had forgotten everything else. Or never been taught it.

  The Corps G-3 and commander were relieved and the incoming G-3 had asked for Arkady. So he had found himself in charge of "evaluating" individual unit training.

  What he'd found was even worse than anticipated. There were entire units that had never even zeroed their individual weapons or boresighted their heavy weapons. There was an armor storage site with sufficient tracks for two brigades, but none of the brigades had trained on them in three years.

  The first thing that he did was cut the "rest and refit" to one third of the "rear area" period. He knew it wasn't enough time, that units would go back into the line insufficiently rested, but until they learned how to be soldiers again rest would have to wait.

  Then, with the concurrence of the G-3, he began finding out which of the blocks were "real" and which ones were in the imagination of the unit commanders. There were a few of those who were relieved and others whose feelings were going to be hurt for a long time. Oh. Well. It was about making sure the soldiers were ready to fight, not just sit in their positions and let the Posleen impale themselves on their weapons.

  Physical training, weapons training, tactical training, small unit tactics and mechanized infantry, all of it was crammed in. Along with testing to ensure proficiency on their basic job of, yes, maintaining the automated weapons of the Wall.

  Slowly, by cajoling and checking and running around at least eighteen hours per day for the better part of a year and a half, he got some of the units to the point that they could find their ass with two hands. One of the ones that couldn't was the 147th.

  It was never their fault, of course. It seemed that every time they fell back for refit, they had taken massive casualties on the Wall. Where other units would sustain five or ten percent wounded and killed in a mass attack, the 147th ended up taking thirty, forty even fifty percent casualties. So they had a constant need for new recruits. And the recruits always arrived half trained.

  After the second time the 147th came through the rest, train and refit cycle, Arkady took a trip up to the Wall when they were returned. The unit had left the rear-area training cycle with, as he well knew, the recruits barely familiar with maintaining and rearming their weapons. But instead of starting a vigorous training series up on the Wall, the division had proceeded to squat in place like so many units of slugs. The few recruits that he talked to all knew they didn't know how to fight the Posleen even from such heavily fortified positions. But their officers and NCOs rebuffed their requests for advanced training. And in the case of the "veterans" the opinion seemed to be that it was pointless training newbies. Most of them were going to get killed in the first attack, anyway. Why bother?

  Of course it was never their fault.

  One of the few military aphorisms that Arkady firmly believed was inviolable was "there are no bad regiments, just bad officers." His brief was specifically for rear area retrain and refit but a word in the G-3's ear was enough for the "ongoing training" officer to start paying special attention to the 147th's methods, just in time for the next attack.

  If anyone had figured out how to read the Posleen mind, it surely wasn't the Asheville Corps G-2. Marshall was a decent guy but the Posleen were just beyond him, or his analysts. Arkady had been in the daily "dog and pony show," to watch his briefer deliver their daily sermon. He turned up from time to time, just to make sure "his" major didn't decide to start speaking in tongues or anything. "Trust but verify" was a decent statement for leadership as well as nuclear diplomacy.

  The young lieutenant colonel from G-2—they all looked like kids these days with rejuv but you could tell this guy was a kid, no more than thirty five, maybe forty—had just finished his presentation, in which he had concluded that "only two out of thirty-five indices call for a major Posleen attack in the next week." In other words, everybody could kick back and relax. Just finished, and the Corps Arty guy was about halfway through his daily delivery of Valium in the form of innumerable columns of more or less incomprehensible numbers:

  "Average tube wear rate per battery per day has been trending downward for the last month and a half while consumption versus resupply of standard ammunition types has, happily, been trending upwards. Based upon G-2 analysis of probable future Posleen intentions it is likely that we can begin getting ahead of the tube-wear power curve in no more than three more months. The last quarter has seen significant increases in trunnion stress analysis training among the second-tier maintenance personnel." All delivered in a deadly dry monotone. It was always the same briefer from Corps Arty and it was one reason that the daily dog and pony show was a must avoid for most of the senior officers that might otherwise attend.

  Arkady had just started to drift off, the previous day had been another long one, when the Corps chief of staff, who had to attend this thing every day, it was a wonder the man hadn't shot the red-leg by now, stood up and, with a decidedly ambiguous expression, stopped the presentation.

  "Thanks, Jack, that was just great, as usual, but the 193rd is reporting a heavy attack on the I-40 Wall. I think we all need to get back to our sections and earn our pay."

  A serious Posleen attack would mean thousands of casualties by nightfall and if it was tough enough it might mean hell and blood for days on end or, if they did their jobs wrong, the fall of the city and millions of civilian casualties. Serious attacks in the past had come close. But it was pretty clear that everyone else in the room was trying to stop themselves from cheering. They'd managed to avoid the rest of the Corps Artillery presentation! Hooray!

  The 193rd got hit in the first attack and then the second attack hit the 147th. Which promptly, for all practical purposes, went away. It sustained over fifty percent casualties in the assault and if it hadn't been for one of the reserve divisions relieving it the Wall would have fallen.

  Which meant that something had to be done.

  As soon as it was recruited back up to streng
th, Arkady had scrapped the original training schedule, which emphasized a range of skills, and concentrated on getting the recruits up to proficiency in their basic combat duties. The division commander had protested that the training regime was contrary to Ground Force policy and he was right. But the choice seemed to be an entirely unprepared division or one that could at least survive in a fixed position.

  He had been in the midst of the retraining program when the Posleen assault on Rabun Gap, and another major assault on Asheville, had hit.

  The assault had immediately forced the 193rd, which was also in its rest phase, to be moved into the Line. And the 147th would have followed. But then the Posleen took Rabun Gap and started charging up the back hallway to Asheville.

  With Posleen at both doors, and more coming knocking through the undefended back, the corps commander had no choice but to deploy the 147th to try to stop the Posleen coming up from Rabun. The Rabun Corps had been well and truly trashed by the unexpected nature of the assault and several nuclear detonations from a trashed SheVa gun and some landers its mate had potted on the retreat. The simple fact was that the entire unit would have to be either replaced or rebuilt.

  In the meantime the Asheville Corps was, "in addition to its other duties" to start pushing the Posleen back out of the bottle. Pushing them back through narrow mountain valleys and passes. Pushing nearly a million of them out of the valley and away from the narrow lifeline of I-40 that was the only thing keeping Asheville alive.

  A tall order for any force. And the 147th got the job.

  It was a job for the Ten Thousand, for the Armored Combat suits. It was a job for an elite mechanized infantry unit with heavy artillery backing.

  And the 147th got the job.

  The division had been incredibly slow to get off the stick. So slow that a Posleen mobile force had taken the critical Balsam Pass and cut off not only the vast majority of the Rabun Corps, but the only SheVa left that could support the counterattack.

  Eventually the 147th had tried to assault the pass. And tried. And tried. It wasn't taking many casualties in trying and yet it was still taking too many for the results.

  Since, with the withdrawal of the last refit unit, Arkady didn't have much to do, the corps commander sent him up to figure out what was going on. And it was pretty much what he expected. Highway 74 up to Balsam Pass was a long line of vehicles, just stopped, with troops marching up the side of the road in a double line. None of the vehicles were in defensive perimeters. None of the soldiers seemed to know what they were doing, where they were going, or much to care. They were all sullen and unhappy at having been pulled out of their comfortable barracks. And none of them seemed to have a clue how to do their job in a mobile combat situation.

  The division headquarters was worse. He remembered reading a description of the British Expeditionary Force in the first battle of France. Something about "generals wandering around the headquarters tent looking for string." He'd thought it was a joke until he saw the division commander of the 147th wandering around asking everyone if they had a sharpened pencil. The man had a pen sticking out of his pocket.

  The "front" wasn't much better. A battalion had been tasked with retaking the pass but they were stymied by Posleen roadblocks. The Posleen force had sent some of its "normals" down the road and placed them in cover to stop the humans.

  The initial assault hadn't even had a scouting element and the first few trucks full of troops had run straight into what was effectively an ambush. Even if the alien on the other end of a gun was a semi-moron. It had killed no more than a platoon or so of troops, but suddenly to all the units the Posleen could be anywhere!

  The battalion commander was dithering, the S-3 was blithering and the XO was having a nervous breakdown. They had been stopped by what appeared to be a single Posleen. Orders to the companies in the advance to move forward were ignored; the company commanders couldn't get their troops up off their bellies. Calls for fire to the artillery section led to fire everywhere but on the target, everywhere including some of the front-rank soldiers. Finally, the lone Posleen was taken out by a mortar section and some of the troops were induced to crawl forward. But it was nearly four thousand meters to the pass, and crawling wasn't going to get them there any time soon.

  Arkady had returned to the corps headquarters and given a short and somewhat profane description of the situation at the pass. After a moment the corps commander dictated a short note.

  "Major General (brevet) Arkady Simosin appointed commander of the 147th Infantry Division vice General Wilson Moser. General Wilson Moser relieved."

  "Arkady, you've got twenty-four hours to make it to Rabun Gap," the commander said.

  "It's going to be ugly."

  "I don't care. Make it to Rabun, or even close, and those won't be brevet stars."

  He had his second chance. What he was learning was that no matter how hard the first chance might have been, the second chance was harder.

  At the division headquarters he had handed the note to General Moser then read himself in. After that he gave the chief of staff a few orders.

  "Get this clusterfuck under control. When I return if I hear one hysterical voice, I will shoot it. If I see one officer running I will shoot him. If the maps are not updated I will shoot you. You're all on probation. We are going to Rabun Gap. If I get there with a platoon left it will at least be a platoon that knows what in the hell it is doing."

  He'd then gone up to the front. The lead company was stalled, again, by another Posleen outpost.

  The company commander was belly down off the side of the road when he walked up.

  "Get down, General!" the captain had shouted. From up the road there was a crackle of railgun fire and Arkady could hear it going by overhead.

  "Captain, are any of your men dying around you?"

  "No, sir?"

  "That is when you get down on your belly, Captain."

  The company was hunkered down to either side of the road, still in a tactical roadmarch position. As far as he could determine there was no attempt being made to move forward.

  He spotted the company sniper by the side of the road, clutching his Barrett .50 caliber rifle to his chest.

  "Son, do you know how to fire that thing?"

  "Sort of . . ."

  "Give." He took the rifle, and the sniper's ghillie blanket, then slid down the embankment.

  The company was huddled behind a curve in the road. There was a sharp road cut and a ditch on the left-hand side and a nearly vertical cliff leading down to a stream on the right. At the turn itself there was a small hillock through which the road was cut. He slid down the embankment, nearly breaking an ankle, then puffed up the hill on the right. At the top he realized how out of shape eighteen-hour days and no PT can make you. But he flipped the ghillie blanket up and slithered forward anyway.

  The Posleen was in a similar position about five hundred meters up the road and Simosin was damned if he could spot it. He looked but since everyone was out of sight the damned thing wasn't firing. The Posleen were not supposed to use snipers; in a way it wasn't fair.

  "Commander!" he yelled down the hill. "Have one of your men stand up!"

  "What?!"

  "I need to see where the Posleen is. Have one of your men stand up in view of it."

  "I . . . " There was a pause. "I don't think they will!"

  "Okay," the general replied and put a round into the wall by the head of the point. "You! Walk out into the road. As soon as the Posleen fires, you can go hide again."

  He could see the point's face clearly. The kid was probably about seventeen and terrified. He looked over towards the hill the general was on and shook his head. "No!"

  Arkady took a breath and put a round through his body. The fifty caliber bullet caromed off the wall behind the private and blew back out through his gut in a welter of gore.

  "You! Behind him! Step out into the road. Now!"

  And he did. And Arkady finally spotted the Posleen.
One round was all it took.

  When he got back to the company CP, he could see his sergeant major standing behind the company commander with a leveled rifle.

  "If you had been doing your job, that kid would still be alive," the general said coldly. "If your men don't move, you have to make them move. If they don't obey orders, you have to make them obey orders. I'm giving you a second chance. I want you up that road. If you can't do it, I'll get someone who will. And if I have to relieve you, it might just be in a bodybag."

  He turned to the sniper and hurled the thirty-five pound rifle at him. "Learn to use this. If you think you can use it on me, give it your best shot."

  The word got around quick.

  After a nuke round took out most of the Posleen, and an attack had hit the survivors from the Rabun side, they had made it to the pass. And on the other side, things started to move. He'd ended up relieving quite a few people, and the people he put in place relieved a few others, but the division had finally started to click. And he'd heard there'd been a couple of other "friendly fire" incidents, at least one of them from the front to the rear rather than vice versa. But he didn't care. As soon as they had the pass cleared he had sent a battalion of Abrams and Bradleys, with scouts out, barreling down the road past the smoking SheVa. They had taken Dillsboro after light resistance and then barreled up the road to Green's Creek under increasing fire. The replacement for his artillery officer had finally found people who could hit the broad side of a barn and the replacement for his logistics officer had figured out how to move trucks. All it had taken was explaining that they had better remember old lessons or they would get new ones.

  He didn't like being a son of a bitch. And he really hadn't liked killing that poor, lonely private. But that one round had gotten the division off the stick better than two months of training or even killing every tenth man.

  But at Green's Creek they were stopped again and it was a fair stop. The lead elements had been so into the chase, or so afraid of what was behind them, that they had gotten chopped to hamburger trying to push the Posleen out of position in the Savannah Valley. And the next brigade had taken more casualties grabbing the high-ground. But they had it. The only problem was, instead of scattered Posleen shell-shocked from the nuke rounds they were faced with apparently unlimited fresh forces pouring down from Rocky Knob pass. He was bleeding troops like water and there seemed no end to the Posleen when the SheVa finally showed up.