“We are not concerned with the welfare of our enemies, General,” the chairman responded.
“Well, I am, sir!”
“General,” it was a member from Ruspina, Davis could not remember his name, “when do you expect to conquer the remaining forces at Fort Seymour?”
“I do not expect to do that, sir.”
The committee members looked at one another in astonishment. “You do not? But you have the forces! Are you just going to leave them there?”
“Yes. They are no threat to us because they aren’t going anywhere and besides, I’ve lost enough of my men already. I will not sacrifice more in further attacks on a very well fortified position such as General Cazombi has built on Pohick Bay.”
“But—but . . . !”
“Gentlemen, those men out there are our hostages. As long as they are there the Confederation is obliged to relieve them. The main battle of this war will be fought right here, gentlemen. I am preparing for that battle, not wasting my time and the lives of our troops reducing that fortress. The Confederation must attempt to relieve that garrison. Given the current dispersion of its forces and the short period of time they have to effect a relief, they can only do that piecemeal and I shall defeat their forces in detail. I have recommended to the president, and he has accepted that recommendation, that the government be moved to a safer location and the city evacuated in anticipation of the heavy fighting that shall eventually occur here.”
“General, that is why this committee is sitting here now,” the chairman shot back.
“Sir, that is why this committee will not be sitting here much longer!”
“General Lyons,” the chairman’s face had gone brick red, “you have been an arrogant and uncooperative witness before this committee! We are considering recommending to President Summers that he relieve you of your command!”
“I serve at his pleasure, sir. Now, if you will excuse me, I have important matters to attend to.”
“General Lyons, one more thing! One more thing, please,” the chairman insisted. “The next time you offer surrender terms they will have been composed by the members of this committee! I’ll be damned if we’re going to coddle these people! That is all.”
“Sir, we’re damned if we don’t.”
Charlette Odinloc had returned to Donnie Caloon’s apartment the night before the war started and now she was stuck there.
“Geez, Hon, they’re really dusting it up out there!” Donnie exclaimed.
“Yeah, Donnie, I couldn’t help hearing.” Sergeant Odinloc tried to hide her distress. The fighting had started and she was trapped in the city. She mentally kicked herself for coming back, but she had desperately wanted that ride in the country to learn about the enemy’s troop dispositions and the G2 had agreed. But her place was back at Fort Seymour, with her comrades, not holed up in Donnie’s apartment. She’d been trapped there for five days now.
“Folks are sayin’ they’re evacuatin’ the city, movin’ us all out somewheres! What do you make of all this?” There was real concern in Donnie’s voice. “I wish I could join up,” he added, pensively, hands thrust deep into his pockets.
“Donnie, if anybody finds out who I really am, I’ll be arrested. I can’t get back to the fort. You’re the only hope I have to stay free. You don’t want me to spend the rest of my life in a POW camp, do you?”
“Oh, no, Hon, no! Gee, yeah, that would be bad news, wouldn’t it?”
“Donnie, since your company has closed down and they’re evacuating the city, why don’t we go back to your hometown?”
“Ya mean it?” he brightened. “Gee, yeah! Mom’d love to meet you!” But just as quickly Donnie’s face fell. “I don’t have no money, Hon! How we gonna get home? It’s halfway around the world! I spent all my money on this place!” He was almost in tears.
“I have money.” Charlette had generous funds for expenses. She fumbled in her clothes and withdrew a large wad of bills that she handed to Donnie.
“Geez! I din’ know they paid you soldiers so well!” he exclaimed, counting the money, his eyes widening as each bill turned over in his hands.
“I saved it up. Where’d you say you live?”
“Cuylerville, over in Loudon County,” Donnie answered, still counting. “Holy chickenshit, babybugs, we are rich! This is enough to get us there and back twice!”
“Where, exactly, is Cuylerville, Donnie?”
“Ah, about ten thousand kilometers east of here. You don’t get seasick, do ya? We’ll have to take a boat. But with this much money we can have us a room to ourselves and, y’know, fuck our way across the ocean!” he laughed and waved the bills in the air. “We can leave tonight!”
“I’m looking forward to that,” she said, dryly. “We need a cover story to explain who I am, Donnie, while we’re traveling, you know? In case anybody asks? I don’t have any papers, any ID, anything like that, you know.”
“Yep. You’ll be my sister. I don’t have any of that ID stuff either, so who’s to know?”
“Well, Donnie, that might not work so well. We’ll be on that ship a while and you know what we’ll be doing, things a guy doesn’t usually do with his sister?”
“Oh, sheeyit, you’re right!” Donnie slapped his forehead and laughed. “Well, we’re engaged, then. You used to work for my company. I’ll tell you all about it before we leave. Think that’d work?”
“Might just do, Donnie, might just. Ah, one more thing? Before we leave?”
“Why sure, good-looking lady with the big jugs!” Donnie laughed, tossing the roll of bills on the table and jumping into the bed.
“I think you ought to know I missed my period.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
* * *
In the weeks since the survivors of the Fort Seymour garrison had been surrounded on the Pohick Bay Peninsula, General Cazombi’s engineers had deepened and strengthened the fortifications and his command post had been moved even deeper inside the complex. Not that Cazombi ever stayed there very long. He spent most of his waking hours out touring the fighting positions, encouraging his troops, making eye contact with them.
Now the same enemy colonel who’d brought Lyons’s first surrender terms was back again with another offer. For this meeting Cazombi had ordered the emissary brought to the CP to give him some idea of how well dug in his force was and to show him that morale was high without revealing anything about the complex defenses.
“You’re looking fit, General,” the colonel said, blinking his eyes as the blindfold was taken off. The command post was a hub of activity and to the enemy officer the soldiers there actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. They were; General Cazombi had ordered sandwiches for everyone to give the impression they were feeding well.
“We meet again, Colonel,” Cazombi held out his hand. From inside a tunic pocket the colonel produced a crystal and handed it to him. “So you’ve agreed to surrender, have you?” Cazombi permitted himself a slight twitch along the right side of his face, which for him passed as a grin.
“Not quite, sir,” the colonel smiled grimly.
“So General Davis has now stepped into the twenty-fifth century,” Cazombi remarked. He hefted the tiny crystal speculatively. “Writing on paper has its advantages. Wait here, Colonel, until I find a scanner and we’ll talk some more.”
In an isolated cubicle Cazombi, his chief of staff, and several other officers read the contents of the crystal. “We can never agree to something like this!” The others, reading over the general’s shoulder nodded their concurrence. “Anybody know where Sorca is right now?” Since Cazombi had pulled rank on the brigadier and taken charge of the survivors, Sorca had been making himself scarce in the command post. “Go find him,” he told his operations officer. “I want him and his officers to see this. I don’t think Lyons himself wrote this—this—garbage, but note one thing? They’ve called for a cease-fire while we consider these demands. That’s time, gentlemen, and time is what we need.”
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��A big Wanderjahr Canfil tomato is what I need right now,” Cazombi’s operations officer laughed.
“I think that’s what the guy who wrote these terms needs,” Cazombi replied, referring to the well-known laxative effect the Canfil tomato had on people not used to it. He didn’t need reminding either that the first signs of dysentery had already made their appearance among the defenders. “No talk about food, Colonel. Go find Sorca, that’ll take your mind off eating.”
When Brigadier General Sorca finally arrived in the command post he looked sleek, well-groomed, and rested. Obviously, Cazombi noted, he was not suffering the same degree of deprivation as his men. He was accompanied by two of his officers, his operations officer and his supply officer. The latter appeared extremely well fed.
“I don’t consider these terms that unfavorable, General,” Sorca said after he’d read them. “We’ll be well treated,” he added, meaning the officers.
“They want to separate us into three camps, general, officers, NCOs, and enlisted ranks and on three separate worlds within their Coalition.”
“Well, it’s accepted doctrine on the handling of prisoners of war, General, to separate the leaders, to keep order in the camps.”
“Yes, I know that, General Sorca and I also know it’s against every convention of warfare to demand that POWs sign oaths not to take up arms against their captors if they’re released. I know we have to go into three separate camps but I will not accept any arrangement where I can’t personally visit and inspect the conditions in the camps maintained for my NCOs and enlisted people. I’ve led them here and I’m going to lead them in captivity as well, if it comes to that. Not negotiable.”
“I think you should reconsider, sir.”
“Not negotiable, General. And surrender is not an option either. We’re too close to being relieved.”
“We do not know that, sir,” Sorca’s face colored. “And we both know that when relief forces do arrive, if they do, they’ll most likely be fed in piecemeal and all that’ll mean is more prisoners for the Coalition to boast about.”
“Gentlemen,” Cazombi addressed all the officers standing around him, “we know this place is going to be the set-piece battle of this war. It’ll be decided here, among the fleets in orbit and here on the ground. We must keep this foothold open! General Sorca’s probably right, the Confederation will only be able at first—at first—to feed in reinforcements piecemeal. But if we hold out long enough, the preponderance of force will swing in our favor. I intend to accept the cease-fire offered, to gain every minute of time we can until decisive reinforcements can be landed, and then we shall break out of this hole and engage the enemy and defeat him. I charge all of you now with the responsibility of ensuring that our forces do not adopt a defensive mentality. I’ve been to every fighting position and, despite everything, morale is high. You all know the age-old prescription for battlefield victory: Morale is to firepower as three is to one, and we have that advantage! We must not lose it. So we cannot accept these terms.”
“If that’s the case, General, then why did you bother to call us here to ‘discuss’ these terms in the first place?” Sorca asked.
Cazombi did not let his face show what he really thought of the natty, white-haired brigadier general standing before him, his chest thrust out and one hand on his hip. “I wanted you to know what the terms were, General and I wanted you above all to know what my orders are. Now, gentlemen, to your posts.”
“General?” Cazombi’s operations officer took him aside for a moment. “What are our chances, really, sir? You’ve always leveled with me and you know I don’t shoot my mouth off.”
“Hank, they’re grim, very grim. But if we can hold this place, that’ll give the Confederation a foot in the door and I think the war will be decided here. What we have to pray for is front-line combat soldiers—Marines, Hank! That’s who we need here and soon!”
Brigadier Balca Sorca took his operations officer aside. “I don’t want our G4 in on this, the man’s a blubbering idiot, a box kicker. You I can trust. That Cazombi, the man’s a glory hound!” he whispered. “Any reasonable officer would have accepted the original surrender terms!”
“Don’t you think the Coalition’d reneged on them by now, sir?”
“Sure. But once we’re out of this hole we could maneuver, position ourselves to advantage, Colonel. As it is, Cazombi is going to get us all killed.”
“What can we do about it, sir? Every man jack in what’s left of our division is ready to fight, despite the reduced rations and the living conditions.”
“There’s always something that can be done, Colonel.” Sorca smiled and patted the colonel on his shoulder. “You just stick with me.”
Two huge explosions shook the bunker. “There goes Nine O’Clock Nina again,” Corporal Barry (“The Liver”) Livny muttered. Barry was famous in the company for his drinking ability, when drink was available, which it had not been since they’d left home months ago. “Hard to tell what time it is outside unless she drops in on us.” He grinned and rubbed the nonregulation beard stubble on his chin. He wasn’t old enough to grow a regular beard but the fuzz had lengthened noticeably over the past weeks. He tolerated very well the snide comments from his buddies, “Hey, Liver, you didn’t shave this morning, did you?” because shaving was a luxury: The water ration had been cut again. There were only two electric razors in the whole company and Corporal Livny maintained he would not take sloppy seconds on a shave. As a Guardsman he could get away with it; a regular would’ve long ago taken a bayonet to his whiskers.
“This crap is bad enough to puke a dog off a gut wagon,” PFC Harry (“Whimper”) Quimper complained, spooning the viscous mass that was his breakfast out of his mess kit. He ran a filthy forefinger around the inside of the tin and stuck it into his mouth, sucking up the last bit of juice.
“You’d bitch if they hung you with a new rope, Whimper. That is real fancy ‘kwe-zeen,’ as the French say,” Private Ennis (“Shovel”) Shovell muttered. “I believe you are actually gaining weight on these rations,” he added, finishing his ersatz coffee. Ennis was forty and married and no one in his platoon could figure out why he’d ever volunteered for the infantry. Whenever the subject came up, which it did frequently, all he’d say was, “Well, take my wife. Please.” In civilian life, he’d been an accountant with an insurance firm, earning more money than either of his bunker mates had ever imagined having in their own pockets. Why he hadn’t joined the finance corps was also a mystery to them and when frequently asked about his choice of arms inevitably he’d say, “I’m Jewish. I refuse to be cast as a stereotype.” Shovell stood over two meters and was well built for a man who’d led a sedentary life. He never complained when it was his turn to use a shovel on the frequent repair details or to clean out their bunker.
“Nah, I lost three kilos this past month,” Quimper said. “What’re we getting, fifteen hundred calories a day now? Man, how I long for the old days, when we got twenty-five hundred a day.” The “old days” for these men of the New Geneseean National Guard had been when they were first inserted on Ravenette. They’d brought their own rations with them. General Cazombi’s troops were already by that time reduced to living on a thousand calories a day. Nobody could now agree on what they needed more, food or reinforcements.
“Isn’t it pronounced ‘koo-zine,’ Ennis?” Livny asked.
“Nah, ‘kwe-zeen’, I studied French once. Before you children were born. I love dead languages, you see?”
“Then why study them, if they’re dead?” Quimper asked. He looked genuinely puzzled.
“Wimpy,” Ennis replied patiently, as if talking to a child, “I may need to know it when I die, which if our rations don’t improve and their aim does, might be fairly soon.”
“I been thinking, maybe we could eat them ratlike things, those ‘slimies’?” Quimper suggested. “I’m hungry enough for some fresh meat, but ugh, a guy’d have to really be starvin’ to chow down on one o’ them things!�
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“There ain’t that many of ’em, Wimpy, hardly worth the effort to catch one.”
“Oh, you’ll see more of them, if we stay in here long enough,” Shovell said. “They’re scavengers and the longer we’re here the more of them’ll be attracted by the waste and—and—you know, the bodies.” He shuddered.
Almost on cue, several heavy explosions shook the bunker. The men scrambled to their positions but nothing moved in the no-man’s-land between them and the rubble that had once been Fort Seymour.
“I wish they’d come,” Quimper sighed, “get me some action.” Since these men had been on Ravenette, the Coalition forces had not mounted a single ground attack against them, just this intermittent pounding with artillery, missiles, and bombs. Their landing had been tough and their division, composed of regiments hastily gathered from several different worlds, had taken very heavy casualties.
“Be careful what you wish for, Wimpy,” Ennis advised.
“I wish I was with Napoleon at Thermopylae, Shovel, at least I’d have a chance to actually fight someone,” Wimpy retorted. Wimpy fancied himself a military historian but he could never understand why the Greeks at Thermopylae didn’t use their cannon to better advantage.
“You are at Thermopylae, my child,” Ennis replied. “Do I need to remind you how that one ended?”
Quimper’s stomach growled audibly. “Man, I used to eat some good shit at home, you know?”
“You get hungry enough you can eat anything,” Shovell replied, dryly.
“Bacon, eggs, sherobies for breakfast every goddamned day! Hey, Shovel, we go into a POW camp like some of the guys are saying, will they feed us better? Man,” he sighed, changing the subject abruptly, “what I wouldn’t give to exchange one of you guys for a woman right now.”
“Wimpy, sometimes you really don’t make much sense,” Shovell replied. “A real man would exchange us for two women.”
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