A Hymn Before Battle

5 Ft. McPherson, GA Sol III 1115 EDT March 18th, 2001 ad

As the buzzing mass of uniforms and their civilian cohorts stood up to exit the auditorium, General Horner waved Mike back into his chair. He waited until the babbling crowd cleared out of the large room and looked around. Several other team chiefs had pigeonholed members of their teams for hasty conferences and he grinned internally. The flag officers one and all, himself included, found themselves out of their depth to an unpleasant degree. Prepared as they were to battle humans, none of them had ever seriously contemplated fighting nonterrestrial forces. The very concept was absurd, or so they had thought, an outdated scenario sitting on a shelf in the Pentagon, dreamed up by a wild-eyed Cold War brain-trust weenie.

But now they had to learn, had to dust off that ludicrous scenario, and he was uncomfortably aware of the adage about an old dog. The science fiction nuts like the troglodyte he had called upon might be pie-in-the-sky dreamers, but they had at least thought about this type of emergency to some degree and were suddenly worth their weight in gold.

He only saw two team chiefs talking to military personnel — the others were talking with civilians, so at least most of them knew where the meat was going to come from.

When he was sure they had a comfortable privacy zone he turned to the former NCO. Mike had been flipping through the issued briefing papers. The clean white incandescent lights on the high ceiling glinted off the laminated pages’ images, bringing out the Top Secret stamps liberally imprinted on the pages.

“Well?” The general gestured with his chin at the papers. “What do you think? I want to get a feel for your impressions before we meet the rest of the team.”

“Off the top of my head?” asked Mike, examining the schematic of some type of vehicle.

“Yes.”

“We’re fucked.” The former NCO slapped the notebook closed and met the general’s humorless smile with a somber gaze. He looked slightly more upset than normal, which the general knew from past experience could mean nothing or everything.

“Would you care to be more specific?” Horner asked, smiling tightly and steepling his fingers.

Mike shifted sideways in his seat, the better to meet the general’s eye, and tapped the briefing papers for emphasis. “According to this, we can expect five invasion waves spaced about six months apart with additional scattered landings before, during and after the main waves. The first full wave will arrive in about five years. Each wave will consist of between fifty and seventy large colonial combat globes, each of those comprised of about five or six hundred combat landing craft. Each of these landing craft will have the Posleen equivalent of a division of troops, although we are calling it a brigade. Am I right? Five or six hundred divisions?”

“Correct. Very short, maybe pocket, divisions. I prefer the brigade designation.” Horner had opened his own briefing papers and was checking the numbers.

“But each globe will have approximately four million troops of all types. Correct?” Mike pursued.

“Correct.”

“That means each wave will drop two hundred and forty million heavily armed alien soldiers.” The accusation was quiet but fierce.

“Right.”

“Five times. Each drop, apropos of nothing whatsoever, exceeds the last estimate I had of total personnel under arms worldwide. And each of the Posleen is an actual fighter, not the one in ten ratio in modern armies.”

“Unfortunately.” Horner gave Mike the benefit of another of his humorless smiles.

“Do you see a problem with this?” asked Mike quietly, his hands clenching and unclenching rhythmically.

“I’m waiting for you to get it off your chest,” Horner admitted.

“Fair enough. Now, these… Posleen use companies of about four hundred. Each company has one ‘God King’ leader-type in command with a vehicle-mounted heavy weapon.” He paused and thought for a moment about the force structure. Something about it was nagging at him but he could not for the life of him bring it to the fore. Then he thought of it and smiled quirkily.

“What?” asked Horner, watching him closely.

“You know what this reminds me of?”

“What?”

“The force structure in Sun Tzu’s day.” He looked up and noticed the general’s puzzled expression. “One heavy chariot to ten infantry,” he prompted.

Jack thought about it for a moment and nodded. “So what does that tell us?”

“ ‘When the enemy is strong, retreat, when the enemy is weak, attack.’ ”

“Yeah, and ‘devise strategems.’ But as to the weapons to be used?”

“A Posleen company will have about eight heavy rocket launchers,” Mike continued, looking back to the briefing papers. “As far as anyone can guess, they are capable of going through an Abrams the long way. Several more three millimeter Gauss guns that will probably do a soft kill on an Abrams and will definitely screw up a Bradley.”

“They’re unaimed,” the general pointed out.

“With all due respect, no, sir, they’re not,” Mike disagreed. “The weapons are sightless, that does not mean that there is no aiming. For all we know the Posleen are naturals for shooting from the hip.”

“Good point,” Horner admitted. “But firing from the hip is only a short-range answer. Are we going somewhere with this?”

“Yes, and that’s the point. If we get in close they’ll screw us using any modern system.” Mike cocked an eyebrow.

“I had actually gotten that far myself,” Horner noted. He gifted Mike with another cold smile and folded his hands in his lap. He had tired of complaints, it was time for ideas.

O’Neal nodded and reopened the briefing packet. “To stop them will require infantry. We can degrade them with artillery; air is out; we might be able to come up with a wonder tank, but if it’s too big the production end will kill us. But we have to have something that can take the fight to them, not just fight in fortifications, stop them in place and survive even when being swarmed, call for fire…”

“I had two thoughts,” Jack added.

“Hmm,” Mike was back looking at the design of the God King’s vehicle, a saucer-shaped anti-gravity sled with a center-mounted heavy weapon. The pictured system mounted a multibarreled heavy laser.

“I was thinking that walkers would be the way to go,” said the general, leaning slightly sideways to see if the former NCO was listening. The slight contemptuous snort was sign enough. “What?”

“See this?” Mike asked, pointing to the laser.

“Yes.”

“Says here the God Kings mount heavy lasers, heavy Gauss guns or multiple repeating Hyper Velocity Missile launchers. Now, unless you’re talking about enough walkers for target overload, I wouldn’t want to be in anything that stands out like a walker.” Mike gestured again at the picture. “Five or six of these things would eat a walker for lunch and there are between fourteen and twenty per ‘brigade.’ Not to mention that it would be some walker to survive these Hyper Velocity Missiles. Last, but not least, I think that cav would consider the walkers their system.”

“I’ll worry about turf fights,” the general corrected, “you worry about systems. So, what about killing them before they get the chance to kill us? We should be able to engage at long range and take out the God Kings.”

“Sure, under the best of circumstances, Jack, but what happens to you when they finally close? Or you suddenly find yourself in their midst? Come on! You taught me that one. I won’t ask if you remember the Grenada jump.”

“Well, then, combat suits, which was my other idea, would be out, too,” said the general with a grimace. Facing these forces with unarmored infantry would make a butcher’s bill beyond belief.

“Not necessarily,” interjected Mike. He flipped to another page of the briefing packet. “Think of it this way. The Posleen fight in phalanx, right? Large blocks of normals with God Kings at irregular intervals, usually well back from the front.”

“Right.” The general’s eyes narrowed as he watched Mike, working through the logic.

“And they basically can’t be routed. You can’t frighten them or hammer them into retreat.” Mike scratched his chin in thought.

“The Galactics never have been able to,” Horner pointed out. The possibility that humans might be able to was inherent in the correction.

“So you have to kill them, each and every one.” Mike shook his head at the thought, tapping his cheek and scratching the slight stubble already arising. “But, even if you’re at a terrain obstacle, and they’re on a limited front, if you kill the first million, there’s only two million behind them.”

“Right,” concurred Horner. “So you have to have something that is robust enough to kill them in the millions and survive getting hit by millions of them simultaneously.” He thought about what he just said in terms of anything remotely “infantry-like.” “You’re right, it’s impossible, we’re fucked.” The general shook his head, lips pursed, eyes focused in the distance on the problem.

Mike’s eyes flashed wide and he snapped his fingers. “Right on the first constraint; wrong on the second. They don’t have to survive being hit by millions of attackers simultaneously.” He stabbed his finger at each point for emphasis. “If you have a classic walker, it will stand out above their formation and be a target for virtually every Posleen in range. But, if you have a suit of combat armor, it can be at their level, notionally, if the terrain is fairly flat, and only hit by the forces in the front rank. If a unit of suits is putting out enough hell on its own, it will suppress the fire directed against it, especially if it is heavily supported by artillery.

“In addition a unit will be able to pass through choking terrain, terrain that will be impassable to the Posleen and damn difficult for tanks or walkers, move faster than Posleen can and bring a world of hurt down on them at every contact. With the right Command Communication and Control systems a suit will be able to call for fire with pinpoint accuracy while simultaneously laying down close direct and distant indirect fire.” Mike nodded in finality. “I was emotionally in favor of the suits from the beginning, I just wanted to ensure that my instinct met reality.” He sat back and smiled, a feeling of relief flooding through him. The coming storm would be costly, but if the Galactics could supply powered combat armor humanity might yet survive.

“Okay,” said Horner, thinking about the concept and nodding to himself. He began to frown, a sure sign that he was pleased. “I can buy that. If the Galactics can build it.”

“And if we can afford it; they’re gonna be expensive. Speaking of which, do you have anything on the budget and force structure discrepancy? It’s not very well explained in the packet.” Mike flipped to the back and searched the index but the only entry referred to a single uninformative line.

“Well,” said Horner, his face turning even more grim, “this is what I was told. The Federation has been fighting this war since before our Civil War. At first they would contest each planet as a Federation, but after they lost planet after planet, they couldn’t handle the mounting cost. So now each planet is on its own when it comes to planetary defense, while the Fleet is supported by the Federation. Planets that are under assault can normally raise funds through their corporate networks for defense. Since we have no corporate allies, where we are going to get the funding for our planetary defense is a major question.”

“Well, if the Fleet is in gear, they’ll never reach the ground,” Mike pointed out.

“Right,” agreed Horner, nodding, “but the Fleet right now is composed of fairly poor quality ships. That is what the Navy and Air Force guys are supposed to correct.” He gestured at another flag officer, an admiral in this case, deep in conversation with another civilian.

“And guess who gets the Navy contract,” snorted Mike, noticing who the civilian was. “So, we are going to be left here to rot on the ground,” finished Mike sourly. “I hope we can at least get a hop in a combat shuttle out of it.”

“Not entirely. The units that we envision here at this conference, the ones that are based around Galactic technologies, will first go to the Fleet. Some of them will be slated to ‘home’ defense, but most will be deployed off planet.” Horner’s face was blank, waiting for the inevitable reaction to that statement.

“Oh, joy,” said Mike, angrily. “So we dream up this stuff, then send all the forces off planet and lose Earth behind them? What are we, a modern Australia?” he asked, referring to the role that country had played in WWII. With the vast majority of its forces battling the Germans in North Africa, Australia was nearly invaded by the Japanese. Only American intervention and a stroke of luck in the Coral Sea prevented the inevitable loss of the continent to the Japanese.

“Like I said,” said Horner, patiently, “a fair proportion of it will be slated to home defense. But the point is, the equipment and R and D costs will be picked up by the Galactics. Also, we won’t just be dreaming it up. We really need to have all our ducks in a row, because what is dreamed up at this conference is, more or less, what we’re going to take into combat. We will not only dreamland the weapons systems, we’ll also be the full authorizers; these weapons will not go through the usual procurement ritual.”

“What? Why?” asked Mike, surprised. Development and procurement was normally a long-term process involving a cast of millions. While it was more than himself and the general on the team, a group like this would usually just start the design process rolling.

“Think about it Mike,” the general snapped. “We’ve only got five years, less if you think about fielding forces for planets already under assault and the attacks that will probably occur before the main landing. We have to get these systems designed, simmed, tested out, the manuals written and fielded in time for units to do a total conversion before the landings.” Horner smiled ferally. “And that also means that every swinging dick of a military contractor with a four billion dollar piece of crap does not get to bid. Our team and some Indowy and Tchpth are going to be designing it from the ground up.”

“Yeah!” said Mike with a smile. “But where are we going to get the bodies?” he continued. “Even if we do a general call-up and recall everybody like me, who’s still young enough they can be half-ass effective, we’re not going to have enough bodies. Not for the Fleet and the ground forces.”

“First of all,” said Horner with a glittering smile, “our job is to concentrate on the systems and let personnel worry about the bodies. But, to give you a little peace of mind, there’s no problem with bodies. When I said every swinging dick who ever wore a uniform, I was serious.

“The Galactics have been generally reluctant to discuss medical technology because of some of their bioethics laws, but they are supplying a rejuvenation and life prolongation technology. We’re going to recall people who haven’t worn a uniform since Vietnam if necessary. Maybe even earlier.”

Mike thought about that for a moment, opened his mouth, then closed it and thought some more. He furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Has anyone really thought that through?”

“Yes,” said Horner, with another tight smile.

“I mean,” Mike paused trying to process the enormous thought. “Hell, turn over any rock and you find a vet. Vets might only make up ten or twenty percent of the population but they are everywhere…”

“And quite often it seems that the guy who is the glue holding something together is a vet.”

“Yeah,” Mike breathed in agreement. “This is going to body slam everything. Manufacturing, transportation, food production, legal… well, maybe not legal services or marketing.”

Horner smiled at the slight joke. “It will. On the other hand, we’re not actually going to call back everyone. The current plan is to use a matrix of current age, ending rank and a score based upon the ‘quality’ of their service.”

“ ‘Quality’?” chimed Mike. He could just see a group of civilian bureaucrats deciding who was to be recalled and who was not on the basis of evaluation reports. Since ERs often reflected how well leaders parroted their commander, they were sometimes not the best method to use in judging combat officers and NCOs.

“ ‘Quality.’ Maybe I should say ‘Combat Quality.’ By weird luck I was in that meeting.” Horner frowned hard. “And I managed to point out that what we are going to need are combat qualified officers and NCOs. Real veterans in other words. So each medal for valor acts as a multiplier, as does a CIB or time spent in a combat zone…”

“Oh, shit,” Mike whispered again and gave a little laugh.

“… so no ‘rear-echelon-chair-warmers’ need apply,” finished Horner with a rare chuckle of his own.

“Damn,” said Mike, surprised once again. “Okay, so there’s no problem with bodies that have military training and experience.”

Mike rubbed the developing stubble on his chin and studied the section on Galactic technologies. “The Federation has a high degree of control on gravity and all the other inertial affiliated phenomena, which includes energy systems.” He turned a page and wrinkled his brow in thought. “And apparently some really good materials science. No psi or other ‘magic’ stuff, good nanotech, but not combat nano that can be related to combat conditions. Yet. It’s all ‘vat’ nano or biotic. I think I can hazard a few guesses from this stuff, but how do we get actual technical questions answered? And how good is their IT?”

Horner slid a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes out of his brief case and handed it to Mike. “This is an artificial intelligence device, voice activated and very interactive. It is in contact with a network of similar devices and all the extraterrestrial databases they have available to them.” He slid his own AID out and queried it. “AID, this is General Horner.”

“Yes, sir.” The voice was an accentless, fluid tenor, totally androgynous.

“Please initiate the other AID for the use of Michael A. O’Neal. In all areas relating to GalTech information he is to have all my clearances and information overrides, on my orders. Is that clear?” asked Horner.

“Yes it is, General. Welcome to the GalTech Infantry Design Team, Sergeant O’Neal.”

“I haven’t been reactivated, yet.” O’Neal smiled. It was the first piece of Galactic technology he had encountered and it met all the criteria for good science fiction. On the other hand, the first thing it did was get a fact wrong.

“The President signed emergency reactivation papers on all members of the GalTech conference with prior service at seven twenty-three am this morning. Paperwork to discharge you for the purpose of accepting a commission and acceptance of a commission are prepared for your signature.”

The NCO’s stone-hard face tracked to the general like an armored turret.

“Not my doing, Mike.” The general shrugged. “I guess somebody figured better safe than sorry. I’ll admit to having the papers on accepting a commission prepared.”

Mike scratched his chin and looked at the ceiling, taking note of the black domes of security cameras. He had a sudden premonition of a future filled with uniforms and security cameras, his life blown on the winds of fate. He closed his eyes, head still tipped back and said a quiet, sad prayer for the end of a golden age, an end of innocence, an ending still known to few.

“Well, General, sir,” he said quietly, eyes still shut, “I suppose we ought to go earn our munificent pay.”