Gust Front

by John Ringo

  The lieutenant had been able to scratch up a few artillery pieces and some rounds to go with them. The artillery was laughable, mostly ancient 105mm cannons. The guns were dated at the time of the last Pahlavi. They harked back to lend-lease from the United States during World War II. Along with them were some dilapidated British five-pounders. The sturdy cannon were the mainstay of British artillery for decades but were now so antiquated that most countries considered them museum pieces. None of the weapons would be allowed in any real army. The tubes were practically worn to bare metal and the trunnions could crack at any moment.

  With this scratch force of half-trained conscripts, antiquated weapons, limited ammunition and short rations he was supposed to stop an alien army that had cut through half a dozen Turkmen brigades. He hoped that they might turn to the north where the remnant of the Turkmen army was digging in to defend Ashkabad. They might, but somehow he doubted it. His luck just didn't seem to be falling that way.

  He supposed it could be worse, although how he was unsure. As he thought that, fine flakes of snow began to fall on the arid, gray, rock-strewn mountains. He sighed. Was there anyone in the world more accursed than he?

  * * *

  Pham Mi shook his head and took the rifle out of the young recruit's hand. He quickly disassembled the venerable AK-47 and shook his head. The militia recruit hung his head in shame as the veteran pointed to the rust on the bolt.

  "Stupid child," snapped the scarred Pham. He hit the young man on the head with the extracted bolt. "You may wish to die, but your comrades wish to live. Clean this, then join the women digging the positions."

  It had been years since Pham had fired a shot in anger. Many, many years. He had not been in the Democratic Army during either the defense against China or the incursion into Cambodia. However, as the leader of the People's Militia for his village it was his responsibility to slow the advancing enemy as much as possible. The leadership did not expect him to stop them. However, the actions of all the aroused People's Militias would definitely hamper the enemy. They had hamstrung the enemies of the People again and again. This was their thousand-year history. And this day would be no different.

  A hundred women from the village were working on the slit trenches and bunkers while the men of the militia worked on their weapons and equipment. He had to snort at that. Most of the weapons were antiques, relics of the great struggle against the French and the Yankees. The equipment, however—the boots, backpacks, ammunition harnesses and uniforms—were all American.

  The equipment was used, assuredly, and much of the material in the crates and crates the militia received was damaged beyond repair. There was much, however, that was not. Only the Americans would be so spendthrift as to throw away perfectly good equipment. And only the Americans would be so strange as to give it to a former enemy for free.

  In addition, there were several crates of excellent American mines. The weapons were familiar as an old friend; he had cut his teeth in the militia removing such from the American lines for later reuse. This was actually the first time he had seen them packaged for shipping and he marveled at the interlaced packaging. The Americans apparently expected them to be shipped in a hurricane.

  With the weapons, ammunition, equipment and, especially, claymores and "Bouncing Bettys" the People's Militia would seriously sting the enemy. The force from the small-scale landing would undoubtedly make it past the large-scale ambush. And, despite the rhetoric of the local commissar, they would take Dak Tho. But the militia would continue to sting them. And sting. Until they were no more. It was the least they could do. America had its own problems; they would not be coming to help. Humorous as that would be. To wish for a battalion of the "puking chicken" soldiers to drop from the sky. Truly humorous.

  * * *

  "Oh, this is truly humorous!" snapped Sharon O'Neal.

  "What've you got, mum?" asked Michaels over the radio.

  Sharon shook her head inside the bubble helmet of the battle suit and snarled, "The clamps on Number Four launcher are bent!"

  The fast frigates had never been designed for war. But human ingenuity had managed to work around some of the problems. The answer in this case was external Missile/Launch Pod Assembly systems for antimatter armed and driven missiles; the frigates could fit six of the big box launchers, each of which stored four missiles. However, because the frigates also lacked storage space, there was only room for two extra M/LPAs, and attaching them meant that a team had to go out of the ship, presumably in the midst of a battle.

  Despite careful husbanding of the weapons, Captain Weston had finally used up all twenty-four missiles. Although there were still occasional emergences, she had determined that it was worth the risk to try attaching the spare stores. Which was why Sharon, two human techs and an Indowy were EVA with a box launcher. And a warped clamp.

  Michaels studied the picture of the clamp in the monitor. "We've got a spare that will work, mum."

  "No," snapped Commander O'Neal. "We'll shift to Number Five."

  "We lost the feed to Five, mum," Michaels reminded her.

  Sharon shook her head and snarled at the tiredness that was clouding her thinking. Even with the near miraculous Provigil, combat fatigue crept up on you. She had to remind herself from time to time that she wasn't functioning at top form, even if she thought she was.

  "We reloaded Three," she said. "Two and Six are gone." The blast from the Posleen nuke had been too close. It was probably what had done the damage to the current launcher. If it had exploded forward of the ship, where the deflector screen still was not fixed, instead of under it, the entire crew would already be talking to the angels.

  "And we're getting intermittent faults from Three, mum," Michaels finished. "I think it's repair the bloody thing or go with one launcher."

  Sharon nodded. She knew her preference but it was really a decision for the captain. As long as they were EVA, the team was sitting ducks. "Captain Weston?" she asked, knowing the AID would switch channels.

  "I was listening," answered Weston, her voice raspy from hours of giving commands. Sharon winced at the fatigue in the officer's voice. They all were on a thin string. "We need all the launchers, Commander. Sorry."

  "That's fine, ma'am," answered Sharon. "That was my call as well. Bosun?"

  "I'll break the clamps out of stores, mum."

  "We'll get started on getting these removed." She shook her head again. Working EVA was hard under any condition; working EVA with the specter of suddenly being a target was for the birds.

  She turned to the Indowy technician, to ask his help in removing the device, but stopped as her eyes widened.

  It was a sight she never expected to see with her naked eyes, and one she expected she would never see again, as the Posleen Battle Dodecahedron translated out of hyperspace. The tear in reality caused localized energy buildups that caused distortion of the stars behind it, so the ship seemed to almost appear out of "cloak," with a ripple like water. The surface of the ship sparkled for a moment more with static electricity discharges and then it was there, fully emerged and seemingly close enough to touch.

  "Emergence," yelled the sensor tech, startled out of a fatigued half doze. "Angle two-nine-four, mark five!" His eyes bulged at the distance reading. "Four thousand meters!"

  "Lock-on," called Tactical, the weapons tracking lidar and sub-space detectors locking onto the gigantic signal.

  "Fire," snapped Captain Weston, automatically. Then her eyes flew wide open. "Belay that order!"

  But it was an eternity too late. The weapons tech had been on duty for eighteen straight hours and fire orders were a reaction that bypassed the brain. His thumb had already flipped up the safety cover and depressed the switch.

  A pyrotechnic gas generator fired as the clamps holding the missile flew open. The gas pushed the eighteen-foot weapon far enough away from the ship that it was safe for it to kick in its inertial thrusters and antimatter conversion rocket.

  Safe for the ship.
But not safe for the weapon installation team. Or the pod of antimatter missiles they were installing.

  CHAPTER 58

  The White House, Washington, DC, United States of America, Sol III

  0526 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad

  "Mr. President, it's time to leave," said the chief of the Secret Service Detail.

  Thomas Edwards stared at the view-screen on the wall of the Situation Room. The occasional flickers of red across Fairfax County were getting closer and closer to the Fairfax Parkway. A solid bar represented the advancing Posleen chasing the remnants of Ninth and Tenth Corps up U.S. 28. He assumed that once they reached U.S. 29 and I-66 they would turn east towards D.C. and the nearest bridges. Unless the scattered forces could outrun the Posleen to the bridges, none of them would survive.

  He had watched Monsoon Thunder. He knew all about retreats under fire. And ignominious defeat. He had been sure that those well-supplied and prepared corps could face the Posleen and live. All of his advisors had been sure. And he and they had been wrong. Completely and totally wrong. And it had led to the worst military disaster in American history.

  And that was not the worst of it.

  The view-screen also showed that the roads were packed with refugees. Most of them were in Alexandria or almost across the Potomac, but the distance between them and the enemy was reducing on a minute-by-minute basis. Soon the first reports of refugee columns overrun by the Posleen would come in. And he could do nothing about it.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered to himself.

  "Shit happens, Mr. President," said an unexpected voice.

  The President looked at the doorway. The Secret Service chief was accompanied by Marine Captain Hadcraft, commander of the Guard Force. The hulking combat armor seemed totally out of place in the White House.

  "Shit like this doesn't happen," snapped the President. "Not here. Not to us."

  "What? You thought because this was Earth it would be different?" asked the captain with a faint note of scorn. "Well, welcome to our world, sir."

  The President turned his chair to look fully at the Marine, who was being glared at by the Detail chief. Since the Marines were really loaners from the Fleet, there was a certain amount of friction between them and the Secret Service, friction that contradicted tradition.

  The Marines had protected the American President since the days of John Adams. They had a longer and deeper tradition of it than even the Secret Service. But the Service had always treated them as the hired help. It was the Marines who held the perimeters while the Service took the close-in Protection detail.

  With the splitting of the Marines to the Fleet, the Detail had assumed that they would take over full responsibility for Presidential protection. Instead, personnel were rotated out of Fleet and detailed to the Presidential Protection Unit. And that created two rifts between the Detail and the Marines. The first had to do with cost and the second with divided loyalties.

  American ACS personnel who had distinguished themselves in combat on Barwhon and Diess and had good records could apply for placement to the PPU. The cycle was two years and it was, blessedly, out of combat.

  On acceptance, the troopers would be sent, along with their suits, back to Earth. After a brief "refresher" course at Parris Island, they were sworn in as United States Marines, outfitted with new Marine Dress Blues and sent to D.C.

  Then they could chase the girls, or boys as the case might be, turn their noses up at the garritroopers of the Old Guard and generally start to decompress.

  However, they were still Fleet personnel. The suits and personnel were actually on loan from the Fleet. And the Federation did not cut the United States any slack on the cost. The reason that the American President, of all the chief officers in the world, was the only one that had a full company of guardian ACS was that they were horrendously expensive. The suits cost nearly a half billion credits apiece and were amortized by the Darhel over twenty years. Add to that the inflated Fleet Strike salary levels and the monthly cost for the company was nearly as much as a division of regular troops.

  Then there was the problem of divided loyalty. The Fleet did not in fact require a person to renounce their citizenship, but had a strong sentiment against nationalism. And Fleet oaths were overriding. Under the laws of the Federation, the Marines were still under Fleet orders and answered only to the Fleet, just like any other ACS unit.

  The Marines knew better. Some of them had applied to get away from Barwhon, where the hell of battle in the swamp ate away at the soul day by day. But most were there because they were, at heart, Americans and proud to defend the country's chief executive. But the incredible cost of the unit and its ambiguous loyalty was a cancer that ate at the Detail.

  The President thought about all of that as he contemplated the Marine captain. The captain was the holder of the Silver Star and the Fleet Cross. The Star was an award retained by the Fleet in deference to the heavy American influence. The Cross was the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Cross.

  No one had been so openly scornful of him in months. It just didn't happen to a President. On the other hand, this was a Marine who had "seen the elephant". He was entitled.

  "Yeah," husked the President. His smooth, well-trained voice was gone after hours of talking. He had been awake for nearly thirty-six hours and felt like a week-dead corpse. "Yeah," he repeated, clearing his throat. "I did. Everybody told me that the terrain and the situation was right. It was just a matter of trying."

  The suits, in deference to their position, displayed the seal of the President when in noncombat mode. But with the faceted helmet on, a seal revealed no emotion. The only hint was in the tone. "As I said, welcome to our world, Mr. President. We come back here to "The World" and listen to the commentators and bunker generals talk about how 'mobile warfare' and 'focal terrain' will defeat the Posleen. And we laugh. And get drunk.

  "ACS troopers get drunk and stoned a lot, Mr. President. 'Cause we're always the ones who clean up the battlefields after the generals fuck us. And after all the fucked-up calls on Barwhon, this one takes the cake."

  President Edwards held a hand up to the Detail chief, who was about to explode. "So. What do you think I should do? Resign?"

  "No," said Hadcraft in a firm tone. "Running doesn't get you anything but a blade in the back. Another lesson of Barwhon. If you have to, you have to. But for what it's worth, I think you should stay. And I'll say that in public. But you'd better learn fast. This kind of mistake can only happen once."

  The President nodded his head. "So it's time to leave?"

  "Yes, Mr. President," said the Detail chief, with a final glare at the Marine.

  "Where are we going?" asked the chief executive disinterestedly.

  "Camp David, Mr. President," said the Detail chief.

  "But there's a teensy problem," noted the Marine. There was a note of grim humor in his voice.

  "We can't stay here. Because of all the bridges, General Horner won't guarantee that there won't be a crossing. But we've had landings all over, Mr. President," noted the Detail chief with a harried sigh. "We just had another one in Pennsylvania. So, I don't feel that moving you is absolutely secure."

  "And don't forget," noted the captain in a wry voice. "There's a division between here and there. And some of them might not be as forgiving of presidential errors as I am."

  The President held up his hand again to the Detail chief. "So, what's the answer?"

  "Put you in a suit," answered Hadcraft.

  The President blinked rapidly in surprise. "I thought that only one person could wear a suit."

  "Well," said the Marine, turning his hands palm up. "There's a long story there."

  "Make it short," said the President.

  "Okay," sighed the captain. He walked over and sat on the edge of the conference table without asking permission. The President noted that crumbs from the secretary of defense's last meal danced off the table top and hung momentarily in the air. He finally realized that the suit
's antigravity system must have activated to reduce the impact of the half-ton suit on the relatively fragile table.

  "The first thing is, suits are fitted to a person," said the captain. "And once they've been 'hardened' to that shape, it takes an act of God, or at least an Indowy master-craftsman, to get 'em changed. That's why we try to make sure that people are gonna stay generally the same shape before we fit 'em. You can change slowly over time, that's okay. The suit will adjust itself to a slow change. But sudden weight gain is really bad. So is loss. The underlayer can expand and contract itself a fair amount, though, so generally we're okay.

  "But somebody can put on another person's suit. If they are generally the same shape."

  "I take it that I'm generally the same shape as someone in the Unit?" asked the President, dryly.

  The suit was silent for a moment. The President was sure that if he could see the face of the officer it would show a certain amount of chagrin.

  "It's not something that we talk about, sir," Hadcraft continued, reluctantly then stopped.

  "What?"

  The suit finally did the palm-up gesture again. The President realized that it might be the only gesture open to a combat suit user. "More than half of the Unit is chosen on the basis of the physiology of the sitting President. We always realized that if the shit hit the fan we'd want the protectee in armor."

  "Oh." The President looked at the Detail chief, who was trying hard to hide a stunned expression. "Well, Agent Rohrbach?"

  The Secret Service officer shook his head. "You guys planned this?"

  "Hey, Agent," said the Marine with a grim chuckle, " 'expect victory and plan for defeat' is the only way to survive on Barwhon. So, yeah, we planned this. Believe it or not we take our responsibility to the Pres very Goddamn seriously."

  The suit did not change position an iota, but something told the Secret Service agent he was being regarded. He nodded in acceptance of that important point.