A Hymn Before Battle

3 Ft. McPherson, GA Sol III 0931 EDT March 18th, 2001 ad

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Admiral Daniel Cleburne and for those of you who don’t recognize me, I’m the Chief of Naval Operations.” The secure auditorium was about half filled with a mixture of uniformed and civilian personnel, mostly male. Something about most of the civilians made Mike suspect they had once worn blue or green. Apparently others besides General Horner had dipped into former commands.

“I was chosen to deliver this address to communicate the gravity of the information and because I could disappear more easily than the other Joint Chiefs. For the record I am currently sailing in the Bahamas.

“As covered in your agreements, each of you should have already contacted next of kin and informed them that you agreed to be locked in for a period of two to four months. You are working with a former colleague on a secret project and you will be home soon. Please, in your future communications, downplay the severity of this situation as much as possible. That a project has shanghaied a number of civilians will, inevitably, come to the ears of the press, but the longer we can stonewall the core information, the better for the nation and the world. We prefer to release it timed with other countries and in such a way as to minimize… uncontrolled reactions.

“My wife hates the old ‘good-news-bad-news’ routine but here goes:

“The good news, for most of you science fiction buffs anyway, is that first contact has been made with a friendly alien species.”

He waited for the muted reaction to die down. Most of the people had been playing the “what’s-this-all-about” game and had reached at least that side of the answer. A few had guessed the rest. Now time for the other shoe.

“Bad news: they’re in the midst of a multiplanet war.”

This time the buzz of conversation went on for some time before he raised his hands.

“Please, we have a lot of ground to cover and not much time, so I’m going to make this fast and dirty. I want everyone to have a general feel for our goals and constraints. You will all be issued briefing papers,” he gestured to a number of officers moving down the aisles and passing out files, “and there will be alien advisors,” a stir started, “and technologies,” and grew, “to draw on. At ease! We don’t have time for this, people.”

He referred to the papers before him. “First a little background. For the last hundred thousand years or so there has been a political entity, for purposes of translation we are referring to it as a federation, occupying the habitable planets surrounding Earth. They’re all peaceful races, apparently, because all the warlike races had wiped themselves out before they discovered deep space flight. For those of you Sci-Fiers,” he grimaced, “who have been pondering over the ‘Drake Equation,’ whatever that is, they’re the reason we haven’t been getting any mail. Until now, at least.

“About one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy-five years ago the periphery of the Federation experienced an invasion by a new race called the Posleen. This species is about as vile as anything you SF guys ever came up with. Basic information on them is included in the briefing papers and more detailed information will be on the planning team net. In general they are four-legged sort of centaur-looking omnivores that lay eggs. Their technology is about equivalent to the Federation’s and generally similar in scope, but they don’t seem to use it very effectively.

“However, being totally nonviolent, none of the Federation races have any history of conflict. In addition, they have some difficulties with engaging in or even discussing violence, even after having been in a war for nearly two centuries. They have only two races that are able to ‘pull the trigger’ so to speak and those races have some problems with it. Because of their problems, they have been unable to slow the advance of the enemy. They’ve tried to create artificial intelligence devices — self-willed combat robots — to handle the problem but after one disastrous experience when the robots tried to take over they outlawed that approach.”

With the exception of the rustle of paper, the large room was now totally silent as hard-faced men and women started flipping though the explosive documents in their hands. Mike smiled grimly at the layout. The document was subdivided into categories: Introduction, Threat, Friendly Forces, Mission and Appendix. It was the most succinct document of its kind he had ever seen.

“The main friendly race involved in actual conflict, the Himmit, are cowards. That’s not an insult, it’s just the way they are as a species. If they think they’ve been detected, even suspect it, they break contact. The other race, the one we have had most contact with, the Darhel, are only able to fire once as individuals. Then they are turned into some sort of automaton by the very action of taking a life. The other two races, the Indowy and the Tchpth, are so totally nonviolent they have no capacity at all for violence.” Mike flipped past the threat portion and looked over the information on the first alien races ever encountered. Whatever happened over the next few months, this conference was going to be interesting.

“So now, basically, the Galactics let AIs do the driving, push a button, automatically lose the button pusher and hope for the best.

“The best has not happened. They have lost over seventy worlds and the rate of loss is growing. They have some, really very little, success in space but are totally lost in ground warfare.

“There has apparently been a faction that has wanted to enlist the aid of humans for practically the whole war. The plan of this faction was to get the help of humans not only as fighters, but as weapons and tactics designers. Because of their lack of experience at war, the Federation has been copying the enemy when it comes to those areas, but the enemy is not exactly the most efficient group at either one.

“They, the Posleen that is, have one thinking leader to control around four hundred ‘troops’ that are not much more intelligent than chimpanzees. Their weapons do not have sights so they depend on mass fire, somewhat like a Napoleonic war broadside. And their ships are laughable, from a real war perspective.

“Since that is all the Federation had to work with for ideas, they use a tank that fires a sort of broad-area energy mine for ground combat. Their ‘warships’ are converted freighters.” He snorted in disgust and looked over toward the mass of black uniforms. “I think we can come up with better, and so do the world’s leaders. You’d damn well better, or I’ll have your commissions.” There was some grim laughter but most of the attendees were listening with half an ear and flipping rapidly through their briefing papers.

“The idea of this conference, therefore, is for each team to determine the sort of weapons and tactics that they envision their country using for this war.

“Now for more bad news. The upper level commanders, that is myself and some of the ‘type’ commanders, are going to have to hash out a few things. But there are some political and budgetary constraints that the Federation has on its military. Those constraints are going to cause most of the Navy, Air Force, Marines and elite Army to be absorbed by the Federation forces.” At that a buzz of conversation filled the previously silent room. Cleburne motioned them to quiet down and kept talking.

“In some cases we will interact with other countries’ militaries that are going through the same thing, especially allied militaries. And the final plans for spaceships, comsat shuttles and space fighters, things related to the Federation fleet, will have to be agreed upon through a joint committee. On the other hand, because America is such a predominant power in those areas, we will have primary position on the committee. Let me be clear about the bottom line here: the people who are coming up with the concepts for warships and infantry forces had better get it right. There won’t be a hell of a lot of review and they’re likely to be what we’re fighting for our lives with. Because that is the last bad news.

“The reason the Federation avoided contact before this is obvious: they might be trading one devil for another. But, again obviously, this faction has gotten permission to enlist us.

“The reason is, they are losing, badly, and they finally had to fish or cut bait. We’re the next planet in line. According to the Galactics four or five large invasion waves are headed for Earth. The first one will be here in only five years.”