by John Ringo
“What happens if they do take us out, right away, that is?”
“Four track will wait for the ground response and take it under fire. Not that we’ll care,” he ended, parenthetically.
“I got family in Richmond,” responded the gunner. “Target,” he said, indicating that the target was in sight in his scope.
“Right.” The vehicle commander looked through his repeater. The missile launcher was pointed into a tobacco field. With any luck the gunner would be able to turn the wire-guided missile and get it on a course to hit the Posleen landing ship before it was destroyed by counterfire. The alternative, firing directly at the lander, had been determined to be suicide on Barwhon. At that point, the thinking went, the Posleen would send their forces towards the launcher. Towards them, that was, as they retreated down the country road.
Since their vehicle was nearly three thousand yards from the lander, the only Posleen weapons they had to worry about immediately were the automatic weapons on the God King saucers and the defensive fire of the lander itself. Not that either system was very survivable for a tin can on tracks like a Bradley.
If the plan worked, the Posleen would be exposed to sniping flank attacks by cavalry units scattered throughout the woods and fields and it would give the ambush sites more time to prepare. “Confirm, target identified. Fire.”
“Man,” whispered the gunner as he closed the firing circuit, “I really wish they’d used an Abrams.”
* * *
The United States Ground Forces were in the unusual situation of having incomplete battlefield intelligence. Knowledge of an enemy’s abilities and intentions is better than half a battle won or lost. For years the pre-Posleen Army had worked on systems to insure that future commanders would have an almost Godlike view of the physical and electronic battlefield. Satellites would look down from their Olympian orbits while closer pilotless drones and deep-viewing reconnaissance planes with sophisticated radar and visual systems gave precise moment-to-moment information on enemy movements.
The coming of the Posleen had ended for all time the concept of “sundering the fog of war.”
The satellites were already gone. Most of them had been destroyed during the ponderous atmospheric entry of the Posleen battleglobes and the rest were picked off at leisure by the automated sky defense systems of the landers. The same defense system created a virtually impregnable information bubble around the Posleen forces. To find the Posleen, small units were forced to maneuver forward until they made contact. It was a return to the bad old days of information warfare; the days of skirmishers and scouting parties. The term “Dark Ages” was used frequently.
Given Posleen psychology, if they saw a target, it would be taken under fire. Once taken under fire, if there were any survivors the Posleen would give chase. If they gave chase they were bound to run into defenses, defenses which were still not prepared. The whole concept of the defense and the information war had been predicated on cavalry or infantry patrols making contact but not being seen.
Now those slowly probing patrols were converting to skirmishers. In most cases the results were poor. On the north edge of the Posleen bubble, in the Tenth Corps area of operations, a reconnaissance platoon of the Twenty-First Cavalry found out the hard way that Posleen can be fast and brutal in movement-to-contact.
Probing forward on U.S. 1, the two Humvees and two Bradleys would bound forward in echelons. First a Humvee would move, then a Bradley. When they were in place with troops deployed, the next echelon would dart forward, twenty-five-millimeter chain guns constantly questing for heat signatures.
As the Bradley of the second echelon was bounding forward, without warning a company of Posleen came out of a side road at a trot. Before the standing echelon could even call in the sighting, all four hundred normals opened fire at under five hundred meters.
The moving Bradley was the first to be hit, as a three-millimeter railgun tracked across the personnel compartment. The tungsten rounds penetrated the thin magnesium armor and began tumbling through the compartment, chewing up the troops within. Their moment of horror was brief, however, for within seconds of one another, four of the twenty hypervelocity missile launchers in the Posleen company found the armored cavalry vehicle. When the slugs of gadolinium traveling at .3c struck the vehicle with near simultaneity, there was not enough left to do a chemical analysis.
The forward Humvee was gone seconds later, victim of massed fire from 1mm railguns and shotguns, and the rear echelon, taking fire from nearly a hundred 3mm railguns and HVM launchers, lasted only moments longer. The entire battle was over before the standing unit could send out a sighting report, before they could even move out of their positions.
The dense smoke and crack of HVMs from the skirmish, however, was not lost on the next echelon of scouts. The backup company a thousand meters behind the point went into a hasty defense and called in a sighting report. Their platoon of Abrams main battle tanks turned to the rear of a nearby strip mall. With a brief, almost unnoticed, crash 120mm cannons shivered the remaining display glass from the inside. The shadows of the buildings effectively hid the massive combat vehicles within.
* * *
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 that 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.