Gust Front

by John Ringo

Arkady Simosin watched the main IVIS display start to light up with Posleen sightings and knew they were doomed. The Fiftieth Infantry Division had just reached its defense points and started digging in. The slower Forty-First was not even completely in place. One look at the number of sightings, and the rapidly blunting blue arrows as cavalry forces were pushed back, told him that the Posleen were coming to dinner and they would not be denied. He punched a button on his command panel and an officer in helmet and LCE answered.

  "Corps Arty," the officer started to say and stopped when he saw who the caller was. "Yes, sir."

  "I want you to target those sighting reports at will, just as if they were valid calls for fire," he told the artillery officer abruptly.

  "They're only guesses, General," protested the colonel.

  "Yeah, but by the time they fire on them, every single one of those roads will be packed with Posleen. Can the battleships range to here?"

  The officer looked off-screen at another display. "Yes, sir. It can easily range to the interstate points, and all the way along the cav's front. Right now we only have the Missouri; the Massachusetts is on the way. But they're not linked into the tac net; we have to give them vocal calls for fire."

  "That'll do. Feed them those coordinates. I want to pound the follow-on forces as hard as possible. Do it."

  "Yes, sir." The officer punched a series of keys. "So ordered."

  "Out here." The general cut the display and leaned back. He zoomed the IVIS out to cover all of northern Virginia, punched in another series of commands and grunted. At current rate of advance, the ACS battalion was still six hours away. And he was fairly certain that one battalion was not going to be able to make a difference. The Eleventh Mobile Infantry Division was getting closer, barely ten hours away, but it was a division in name only, with a brigade and a half of troops fully suited and only partially trained.

  He punched another button and called up the Chief of Staff.

  "Okay, I've had a really bad idea."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "So far we have failed miserably at every movement we have tried to make, but I think we need to get ready to make another one."

  "What, now, sir?" asked the COS, upset and startled. The corps was barely getting into its positions and he could not believe the general was preparing to move.

  "Not now. I said prepare for one. With the way they are boiling out of there, we might have to turn this into a battle of maneuver. If so, I want to be as prepared as we can. This battle is in play mode; it's up to company commanders now. So get the staff working on a plan to pivot the corps to a north-south axis, anchored on the north by the Occoquan. Start the Nineteenth towards the west; they'll anchor the left flank. If we find ourselves being pushed out of position we'll need to pivot towards Manassas and slow their rate of advance towards Ninth Corps."

  "What about the Forty-First, General? They'll be swinging in the breeze."

  "Plan it with them on the north flank, but I agree that they will have problems completing the maneuver. However, they can retreat towards the Occoquan bridges or, barring that, they can move down to the Potomac and be Dunkirked under the cover of the battleships."

  "You're assuming that we won't be able to stop them, sir."

  "You are correct. At a tactical level we cannot maintain visual contact with them long enough to get good calls for fire, at least not so far. We will have to see what happens when they come into contact with the prepared positions. If we had had more time, more room to trade for time, we might have been able to pull this off. But without good trenches, wire and bunkers, I think they'll overrun us. We'll see."

  * * *

  "Aiming point this instrument!"

  "Aiming point identified!"

  The missing platoon sergeant and One Gun had linked back up during the move and Keren was back where he preferred to be. The L-T had handled the sudden move—and the linkup with the missing tracks—with remarkable smoothness. As the hammer came down the lieutenant seemed to be getting more and more into harness, like a young horse that never really shines until up against a competitor. He was laying in the section under Staff Sergeant Simmons's direction and doing it well. The guns were up almost before anyone knew it and almost simultaneously the released troops dove into their tracks to check the IVIS displays.

  Red enemy marks sprinkled the entire front of the Twenty-First Cav, only six miles down the road, and the hammer of missiles and artillery could be heard from the distance.

  "Look," said Keren, scrolling the display to the west, "it's solid along their front all the way to the edge of the division."

  "So?" asked Sheila.

  "I doubt that they just end there because the divisional front does," snorted Riley.

  "Huh?" The ammo bearer was only seventeen and straight out of basic training. Most of the symbols on the display were still foreign to her.

  "The Posleen are probably out around the cav's flank," explained Sergeant Herd. "And there," he continued, pointing to a unit marker in movement down Gun Truck Road, "is the response."

  "Only a company," muttered Keren.

  "They're stretched thin covering a three-division front," pointed out Herd. "Besides," he pointed to a mass on the primary roads, centered on the cavalry division's forward units, "that's the main thrust. If the Posleen are off the roads, they're slowed down." He turned towards the front of the track and began a fuel and maintenance report.

  As the rest of the squad began maintenance or personal activities, Keren stayed to track the scout company as it rushed down the twisting backroads towards the threatened flank of the division. Before it was halfway there it flashed the purple of in-contact then dropped off the screen.

  "Shit!"

  "What?" asked Sergeant Herd standing up quickly and banging his helmetless head on the overhead of the crowded track. "Damn! Cocksucker!"

  As the sergeant cursed every piece of metal ever designed by an engineer with the express purpose of making an infantryman's life uncomfortable, red enemy icons began popping up to the rear of the westernmost regiment of the Twenty-First. A fuel convoy, driving forward to refuel the thirsty vehicles of the embattled division, went purple then winked out. Other logistics units began to report contact as the main reserve of the division started a movement to the west.

  "Posleen have turned the cav's flank," said Keren. "They must have bypassed the security companies and they're in the rear area."

  "Shit." Reed hung upside down from the top of the APC watching the inverted screen. "Better get ready to rock and roll, boys and girls."

  CHAPTER 44

  The Pentagon, VA, United States of America, Sol III

  1024 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad

  "This is Bob Argent reporting from Continental Army Command. With the unauthorized firing of artillery by units of the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division, the Posleen have started pouring out of their positions around Fredericksburg like ants out of a kicked hive." The reporter looked like hell. It was obvious under the makeup that he had gotten as little rest as the soldiers he was reporting on. Under normal circumstances a replacement would have been sent in to cover for him while he got some sleep. But the veteran reporter would have none of it; this was the news event of the century and he was at the nerve center.

  "I have with me Lieutenant Colonel Guy Tremont, aide to General Horner, the Continental Army Commander. Colonel, how do you rate the chances for the Tenth Corps forces, that is, can they hold?"

  "Well, Bob," the colonel said with a somber smile, "Tenth Corps is a very heavy corps and if any five divisions can do the job they will. We have great faith in General Simosin here at CONARC and everyone feels that if any general can command a defense like that, it is General Simosin."

  "What about the confusion overnight? We understand that many of the units got lost."

  "Define lost," said the colonel, with a shrug. "It's central Virginia, they always knew where they were. In many cases there was great confusion about where they should be, but th
at happens any time that there is a sudden change of plan. Tenth Corps has recovered and is in position to handle the threat."

  "Is that an implied criticism of the President, of his sudden change to defend forward of the Potomac?"

  "No, definitely not. The President is the Commander in Chief; his word is law for the military. If he wants us to defend in close, we defend in close; if he wants us to defend in Pennsylvania, we defend in Pennsylvania."

  "So you think that the Tenth Corps will be able to stop the Posleen?"

  "There is no surety in war, and certainly no surety when the situation is as chaotic as this one, with the threat arriving before expected and by surprise. The Tenth will do the best that any unit can do. If they succeed, so much the better. If they do not, and have to retreat, there is another bullet in that gun. The Posleen still have to get through the Ninth Corps coming into position near the head of the Occoquan reservoir. One or the other should stop them.

  "According to the IVIS displays, they are already starting to turn the edge of the cavalry . . ."

  * * *

  Jack Horner nodded his head solemnly at the accurate statement.

  "So you're still in favor of broadcasting the IVIS?" asked General Taylor. The two were conferring about how many and what units should be moved into the area, but they had taken time to watch the hastily briefed interview.

  "Yes, and when the ACS get here, I'm going to broadcast forty channels of raw video for the networks to monitor, edit and distribute; every platoon leader at a minimum. There is no indication that the Posleen use operational intelligence and under the circumstances I think that the American people have a full right to know what is going on."

  "Well, the President agrees with you," Taylor commented with a nod.

  "I wish I could have gotten him to agree with me on the locations to defend," said Horner, with a tight, humorless smile. "If we had even moved up to where the Ninth is digging in, it would have made this almost survivable. Especially with the Tenth up and the Ninth in a second defensive belt. As is, I'm afraid they're going to chew up the Tenth then go for seconds on the Ninth. The Tenth has its right flank swinging in the breeze."

  "He should have extended his line with the reserve."

  "No, watch how Arkady uses the reserve; I think that might save the corps. At some point the Posleen would have turned the flank. They'll turn the flank of the whole corps if he's not careful. But the Nineteenth is already moving to intercept."

  "Okay, it's Arkady's battle, let's let him run it. What's the story on Richmond?"

  * * *

  The Posleen scout companies moved southward on the broad highway towards the distant city skyline at a tireless ground-eating lope, columns of phalanxes on either side, heads swaying from side to side searching out potential trouble. A unit of the thresh had been spotted, but they were still too far out to bother engaging, their tracked tenar that had given so much trouble over the last few hours hull-down and at maximum engagement range. The lead God Kings considered firing but decided to hold off until their companies were in good range.

  There had thus far been no sign of the twin-turreted military technicians and the scout leaders breathed silent words of relief. Bad enough to fight a fast and slippery enemy that fired from ambush and disappeared into the brush taking countless oolt'os with them, but at least there were brief targets to engage, an enemy to combat. The military technicians and the explosives that coasted through the air on ballistic paths were impossible to fight. As long as neither of them made an appearance the battle was a foregone conclusion.

  Finally they were getting in range of the thresh, close enough that massed fire would start to strike their hated tenar, and the western God King gave the command to fire.

  * * *

  As a hail of railgun rounds and missiles began to spark off the overpass, the cav platoon leader gave Mueller a quick thumbs-up and dropped into his command Bradley, the hatch quickly shutting behind him.

  Mueller checked the monitor from the ambush site and decided to give the Posleen a little more rope with which to hang themselves. The lead companies, which he considered fair game for the cav, were still in the ambush zone. Let a few more Posleen pass out of the ambush zone and fill it with the heavier armed follow-on companies. Behind him the driver in the Humvee left for his use started the engine, ready to get out of harm's way as intended.

  Mueller nodded as the first God King on either side passed completely through the ambush zone. Their companies were engaging the cav well, coming forward at what would be a canter in a horse, and apparently confident that they had this battle won. Wrong. He smiled ferally and engaged the firing circuit.

  At the speed of light the current flashed to the far side of the half-kilometer mechanical ambush and then simple chemistry took over.

  Since Amanda Hunt and the engineering platoon leader who helped set up the ambush were both pessimistic people, there were three fairly independent methods of detonation for the claymores. It was one of the reasons the ambush was so time consuming to emplace. First, the entire ambush was "daisy-chained." Each claymore had two points for detonators to be attached. The first claymore had a detonator on either side, one for wire reception and the other for radio, and was wrapped with detonation cord. One line of detcord ran from another radio detonation sequence, another line ran from a secondary wire detonation sequence, the third ran to the next claymore in line and the fourth and last ran to the third claymore in line. At each succeeding claymore the same sequence was set, with the exception that the succeeding claymores only had the wire circuit on one side and an "inbound" detcord on the other. Second, the wire backups on all the claymores were circuit-delayed to let the primary daisy-chain sequence carry the detonation.

  As it turned out, the backups and redundancies were virtually unused except for one point on the east side where a stray twenty-five-millimeter round had severed the detcord daisy chain and, surprisingly enough, did not set the whole ambush off. Elsewhere the entire sequence ran like a Swiss watch, a tribute to Ms. Hunt's consummate professionalism.

  When the first claymore detonated, it in turn fired the detcord that was wrapped around it. This cord, like an exploding fuse, carried the explosion the few meters to the next claymore in line which exploded and sent it to the next. With a series of trip-hammer explosions sounding like the world's largest machine gun, five hundred yards of roadway flashed white and the air filled with dust and smoke.

  As the air cleared, it revealed both sides of the roadway packed with dead and dying Posleen, a monstrous abattoir of torn yellow flesh. In many cases of the outer centaurs, only the finest of forensic analysis would be able to separate one mangled centaur from another. In less than a second, over sixty-four hundred Posleen, normals and God Kings, a full B-Dec command, was wiped off the face of the earth.

  The lead companies checked, shocked by the destruction behind them and fighting the conflicting stresses of justifiable fear of what they might face and the God King bondings driving them on. As they checked, the first artillery started to fall.

  The Posleen in the phalanxes following the erased companies checked as well—shocked and terrified by the sight in front of them—but only for a moment. As some units began to pour around the organic roadblock, other units began gathering the dead and transporting them back to the nearest landers for processing. The Posleen firmly believed in the doctrine of waste-not-want-not.

  The lead companies moved back up to a canter to try to close the distance to the enemy through the beaten zone of the artillery but the combination was just too strong. The time the Posleen had used up on Fredericksburg had been put to good use by General Keeton and his staff. Most divisional artillery and all the corps mobile artillery units had been moved forward to support the ambushes while their revetments on Libby and Mosby Hills were being prepared. Over a hundred 155mm artillery pieces—each with a thirty-meter "footprint"—were firing into a zone only one hundred meters wide and five hundred deep.


  Between the accurate fire of the Bradleys and the massed artillery, the lead companies of Posleen were erased in seconds before coming within five hundred meters of the cav scouts.

  The cavalry had not escaped unscathed. The plasma cannon of the western God King had accounted for two Bradleys and a lucky hit by the massed HVM for another. But the reinforced platoon, the artillery and the ambush had accounted for over seven thousand Posleen in less than five minutes. The destroyed tracks were quickly replaced on the line with vehicles from the reserve platoon while medics worked on the traumatized survivors.

  It takes approximately three minutes for a Posleen to gallop a kilometer. The forward edge of the ambush zone had been placed at a kilometer and a half from the cav unit while the surviving Posleen forces were an additional half a kilometer back. The cavalry company commander called for fire to be adjusted outward as the follow-on Posleen companies charged forward.

  For the first five hundred meters the centaurs slipped and slithered in the offal-moistened soil of the verge. The unholy slurry slowed their movement through that beaten zone and increased their time in the zone of fire. However, within a few minutes Posleen battle units were up on the interstate and pounding forward towards the cav unit.

  Despite the long gallop and the massed artillery fire, it was obvious that the tide of Posleen would eventually break through. Even as the lead elements drove forward—melting like a sugar cube in water—more forces poured around the distant bend. It was an unending stream of centaurs.

  The company commander ordered his reserve up to the line and prepared to retreat as the Bradleys and artillery began to pound the assaulting Posleen.

  Meanwhile, Mueller took one look at the charging army of centaurs and decided that this was a better fight for the cav. He picked up the circuit board—also being a great believer in waste-not-want-not—and trotted to the waiting Humvee. With a sigh of relief, the driver pulled out as soon as he was on board.

  CHAPTER 45