Alarm of War v-1

by Kennedy Hudner

  Prince RaShahid pursed his lips together. “My father, the Emperor, protested to the Arcadians. Do you what they did? They sent a lawyer.” He shook his head in wonderment. “They sent one of their senior trade diplomats and a lawyer!” Hudis knew from his briefing that there were no lawyers in the Dominion. All law came from the Emperor, and he enforced it with a will.

  “The lawyer actually had the temerity to lecture my father on the Darwin Robinson-Patman Accord, as if the Emperor of the Great Tilleke Empire was a schoolboy in need of a lesson.” The Prince’s face flushed at the memory of this insult. “The Emperor correctly pointed out to the Arcadians that the Empire was not a signatory to the Robinson-Patman Accord, but the Arcadians refused to reason. The lawyer even suggested that perhaps the Emperor did not understand the need for the laws against price discrimination. Did not understand?” the Prince sneered. “The Emperor of Tilleke did not understand?”

  The Prince sighed deeply. “My father is a patient man, but this was too much even for a man of his tolerance and benevolence. Oh, he respected all the forms. The diplomat was sent back to Arcadia unharmed. The lawyer, of course, had to be punished for his impudence. My father had him impaled in the center of the Throne Room.” The Prince smiled at the memory. “Do you know what his last words were as they put him on the stake? He said, ‘There must be some mistake.’” The Prince gave a short, barking laugh. “Really, where do they find these people? ‘There must be some mistake?’”

  Hudis had heard the story, of course. The DID colonel had shown him the video. It was a major breach of diplomatic immunity and the Assembly of the League of Human Worlds had voted to sanction Tilleke. As for the Arcadian lawyer, he was still there in the Emperor’s Throne Room. Emperor Chalabi had ordered his body preserved and lacquered, still impaled on the stake. It had been left as a reminder to diplomats and other visitors to mind their manners.

  The Prince laughed again, then abruptly sobered. “Meanwhile, the Empire has needs for energy that cannot be met. Our industrial development has fallen behind schedule. Food production is not sufficient to meet our needs. If we had the ziridium that the Arcadians stole from us, we could solve our energy shortage overnight. Instead we must go into the market to buy necessary stores. Those purchases, of course, go through Victorian brokers, who take a commission that is charged against the Empire.”

  The Prince leaned forward, tapping the table in emphasis. “The Emperor is a great man. His patience is vast, but not limitless. The Arcadians have not mended their criminal ways, and have insulted the Emperor’s honor. They leave us no choice: the Tilleke Empire will invade Arcadia and take back the ziridium ore that is rightfully ours.”

  The room fell into an abrupt silence. Hudis nodded in satisfaction. The Tilleke were ready to go to war! They did not have to be convinced or bribed. They were ready, even eager. Then Elizabeth Dreyer spoke.

  “The Victorians will stop you,” Dreyer said flatly. “Their fleet is twice the size of yours and its ships are newer and more powerful. If you attack Arcadia, the Vickies will come running and when they are finished, your fleet will be a smoking ruin and you still won’t have the ziridium.”

  Hudis cast a cautious glance at the Savak bodyguard standing against the wall and cleared his throat. “Unless…unless of course the Empire has the support and help of its allies. As the Assistant National Security Advisor said, the Victorian fleet is twice the size of the Tilleke fleet. But it is not twice the size of the Tilleke fleet, the Dominion fleet and the Cape Breton fleet combined.” He smiled. “Perhaps we can accomplish together what no one of us could accomplish alone.” He glanced at Dreyer, who nodded imperceptibly. “We have been thinking of a way to distract the Vickies, forcing them to divide their fleet. It is still risky, Prince RaShahid, particularly for your Empire. The Victorian fleet is formidable.”

  Prince RaShahid nodded thoughtfully. “What you say is true, Citizen Secretary, but perhaps the Victorian fleet is not as formidable as you think. We have developed…ah, a device that could help us in our effort.”

  Talk suspended while servants brought in refreshments. When the last of them had left, Hudis outlined his plan for conquering Victoria. When he was done, he sipped his wine and looked at the beautiful woman from Cape Breton and the haughty prince from Tilleke. “There are many details, of course, but first we must make a collective decision: Will our three nations join together in this crusade or not?”

  Elizabeth Dreyer nodded once. “Cape Breton will join.”

  Prince RaShahid stood. “His Most Sovereign Majesty, the Emperor of Tilleke, welcomes your allegiance in his war against the Arcadians. He will cooperate with your effort against Victoria.” He tilted his head and made a clicking noise with his tongue. The two Creche-born Savak stepped forward and flanked the Prince as he swept from the room. Hudis was mindful to keep beyond the proscribed ten feet.

  For a long moment after the Tilleke had left, neither of them spoke, then Dreyer combed her hair back with her fingers. “You realize, don’t you, that the Tilleke will turn on us once the Vickies are destroyed?”

  “The Tilleke want Arcadia and the ziridium,” Hudis replied neutrally. Make her show her hand first.

  Dreyer nodded. “And once they have it, fifty percent of the known ziridium reserves in the Inhabited Universe will be in the hands of the most xenophobic, psychotic race in the League of Human Nations.” She cupped her chin in her hand, pursing her lips in a mime of thought. “Tell me, Citizen Secretary, do you think that is a good idea?”

  Hudis sighed. Cards on the table, then. “The Tilleke are vicious attack dogs. We can use them, but we can never trust them. I don’t know what this new weapon is that they have, but I am satisfied that they will make the Vickies pay dearly. Will the Tilleke win?” He shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, as long as they hurt the Vickies badly. We need either a victorious Tilleke or a victorious but badly battered Victoria. In either case we will have our prize.”

  Dreyer studied him, her eyes wide and unmoving. He realized wryly that she was no political neophyte. More like a very sleek, dangerous cat. “Ah, yes, our prize. Victoria, its planets and its resources.” She smiled lazily. “And of course, its location — the very center of the human universe. All that commerce passing through every day.” She straightened and clasped her hands together.

  Here it is, thought Hudis. Now comes the hard bargaining.

  “Thanks to the Vickies, Cape Breton is a poor nation. When we defeat Victoria-” She paused, inclining her head to Hudis. “When we and the Dominion defeat Victoria, we want something to repay us for the harm they have caused.”

  Hudis frowned. “We have already agreed that we will jointly govern the planets-”

  “We want the Titans,” Dreyer said firmly. “Independent control and exclusive rights to their total output.”

  The Titans. Victoria had built two enormous ship building and repair facilities, each one larger than any ship building yard in any other sector. They named them after the early Greek gods, Atlas and Prometheus. A third facility, Hyperion, was under construction, but years away from completion. In their smug belief of their own superiority, Victoria used the Titans to produce mostly freighters and merchant ships, but whoever held the Titans would be able to build more warships than the rest of the worlds combined. It was a staggering logistical advantage and would make them invulnerable from attack.

  Hudis smiled wryly and held up one finger. “One,” he said. “We’ll each take one.”

  Dreyer considered for a moment, then smiled in return. “Very well, Citizen Secretary. Cape Breton will take Prometheus.”

  She had played it well, Hudis thought. Prometheus was the newer of the two, with more advanced computer aided manufacturing capability than its older brother. Still, each of the Titans was a treasure beyond measure.

  “Done!” he said warmly. We can always take it back later.

  Chapter 8

  P.D. 948

  Emily’s Personal Journal


  At Victorian Fleet Training Facility on Aberdeen

  Another three weeks without an entry. I can only plead exhaustion. Years of sedentary living did not get me ready for this! Some days I think they intend to run us to death, then other times they throw us into a four day combat maneuver where we are lucky to get three hours of sleep a night. Funny, everyone gets real macho about staying awake for thirty hours straight, but the fatigue kicks in. People start making mistakes, tripping, forgetting to bring extra battery packs for their rifle. “Friendly fire” incidents go up. We actually had one recruit fall asleep while he was on a night march and walk into a tree. Broke his nose. Sergeant Kaelin field-packed it with toilet paper and made him continue for the rest of the maneuver. “If the soldier is combat effective, he fights,” he told us. “The mission comes first.” On the other hand, maybe if the soldier were allowed a little more sleep, he wouldn’t walk into trees. Dream on, Emily.

  Other lessons as well. Every day they select one of us to be a squad leader, platoon leader or company leader. No training or instructions on how to be a leader, just, “You’re it. Take this position” or “Hold this hill.” As my statistics professor would have said, the results are ‘variable.’ What is interesting, though, is how quickly you learn who is good and who isn’t. First lesson: The bad ones get more of us killed than the good ones. Second lesson: the tough, swaggering guys often can’t plan their way out of a paper bag. No feints, no maneuver, no psychology, just charge straight in and damn the torpedoes, or machine guns, or whatever. Enormous casualties. Sometimes they take their objective, more often not. When they do win there seems to be a perverse pride that they won the battle despite the dire losses suffered by their men. Stupid, just stupid. And God help us if the idiot wins like this, it makes him more prone to do it again in the future. Foolhardy bravery + lack of imagination = disaster.

  Which brings me back to Grant Skiffington, the Admiral’s son. I know he is smart enough to plan a decent, imaginative attack, but he doesn’t bother. He just likes to fight and isn’t too concerned with actually winning. He doesn’t seem to care much if people get wounded (which hurts like a sonofabitch). After one skirmish I told him he was a jerk and that a lot of his people had been killed for nothing (he didn’t even take the objective). He laughed and called over one of the FOFs. “How you feeling?” he asked the guy. “Fine,” replied the soldier. Then Skiffington leaned over to me and said sotto voce, “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Tuttle; he’s not really dead.” Then he laughed and walked away. I told Cookie about it and she said I should have shot him in the ass. “He feel some pain then, girlie. He most certainly will.” Cookie is ambivalent about Skiffington. She admires him for his ferocity in battle, but doesn’t like the casualties. “He’ll take the hill that needs takin’ real bad, but he might be the only one left standin’.” Sergeant Kaelin just shakes his head and asks Skiffington if he can really be that stupid. He’s not, of course.

  Sergeant Kaelin still hasn’t picked me to lead the Company in any significant maneuver. Getting nervous.

  Chapter 9

  P.D. 948

  The Recruit

  At Victorian Fleet Training Facility on Aberdeen

  For the next two months, Blue Company was in the field at least six days a week. There were ambushes, assaults on a fixed target, long patrols in free-fire zones, and more. Each day the Drill Instructors would pick recruits to be officers for that day’s exercise. Emily quickly discerned that they were given problems, but not taught the solution to the problem until the next training session. The first week they were given maps and a compass, and then were sent on long hikes with half a dozen way-points. They got helplessly lost, and in one case wandered so far outside the training area they did not even encounter enemy troops. They got back to the camp a day late, out of water and food and thoroughly exhausted. The next day there was a lesson in map reading and orienteering. Emily paid very close attention, noted her mistakes from the day before and vowed that whatever other screw-ups she might make; she would never be lost again.

  They were run through several hairy fire fights before they were taken to a shooting range, and once there every one of them paid close attention to how to properly aim the Bull Pup. They ran out of battery packs, and learned to check out additional ones from Supply. They learned that water was too damn heavy to carry a third canteen, but to refill the two they had at every opportunity. They learned to never, never pass up an opportunity to sleep.

  And they learned about each other: which recruits never complained; who always complained; who would scream and bully; who would listen quietly and take the time to think the problem through; who you could rely on.

  For sheer cleverness, though, Emily’s favorite was Hiram Brill. Awkward, gangly, his slow speech masked a chess player’s sense of strategy. Blue Company’s mission was simple: hold a communications center. The building sat next to a small copse of trees in a flat field. The “enemy” was made up of Green and Gold Companies, two hundred soldiers against Blue Company’s one hundred. The jump off point for the attackers was fifteen miles away. They would have to march through hilly, wooded terrain to reach the objective.

  When he got the assignment, Brill sat down with a topographical map of the area he had scrounged from the Camp library. He studied it for twenty minutes, then divided the Company into five groups of twenty each. He flipped pages in his notebook, then called out the names of fifteen men and women who had all been long-distance runners in school, and had them dump all their gear except for their rifle, two extra batteries, one field-ration bar and a bottle of water. One man was given a pair of binoculars and a radio.

  “You are the rabbits,” he explained. His voice was strong, but Emily saw his face was pasty white. “Green and Gold jumped off thirty minutes ago at the base of this ridge line, fifteen miles away. You guys can run faster and longer than anybody in Blue Company. We need you to reach the enemy as far away from here as possible so that we’ll have the maximum amount of time to whittle them down before they reach this building. Move as fast as you can until you make contact with Green and Gold. Send your three best runners ahead to be scouts. Once you find the enemy, fall back to a good position to set your first ambush. Harass the hell out of them! Shoot like you’ve got all the ammo in the world! They’ll be stunned at first, then they’ll come at you hard. As soon as they do, fall back! Stay in contact, but keep falling back. I want them to chase you. If they don’t chase you, hit them again.” He marked a spot on the map. “When you reach this point, this ridge line right here, another team will take over being the rabbits. You just break contact and come all the way back. There’ll be food and water at these points. Eat a little, have some water, then go. Don’t try to carry anything, just get back here.”

  The second rabbit team was to harass and fall back over three miles, then break contact while the third team took over. This way the Green and Gold troopers would continually face fresh defenders, who were traveling light and fast.

  It worked like a charm. The Green and Gold companies had only marched four miles, moving slowly with full packs, when they ran into the first rabbit team. They lost ten men FOF before they could muster a counter attack, but try as they might, they could not seem to catch the fleet-footed Blue soldiers. More Green and Gold fell, but they doggedly pushed on. Sometimes the attackers caught up to the Blue soldiers, and even managed to kill a few, but they paid dearly for their meager victories. It was a hot day and soon the pace began to tell on them. The Gold commander urged the men to slow down and not get worn out, but the Green commander urged the men forward, screaming invectives each time the Blue defenders picked off another attacker. The stronger, fitter soldiers soon pushed out in front, while their slower comrades fell behind. Command and control began to break down and the attackers soon became several disorganized, individual groups rather than a cohesive force of two hundred soldiers.

  Ten long, hot hours after the first shots were fired, the Green commander
led the front elements of the attack force to the hill overlooking the communications center. By then the attack force had lost ninety men killed to twenty of the Blues, and the attack force was strung out over five miles. Rather than wait for the rest of his force to arrive, the Green commander (the Gold commander had twisted his ankle six miles earlier) ordered an immediate attack with the forty men he had at hand. Tired, hungry, and anxious to launch a bold attack against his objective, the Green commander did not bother to make a reconnaissance, and thus missed the last opportunity to save himself and his men.

  From his spider hole, Brill watched the attackers emerge from the copse of trees. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, then keyed his radio: “Steady, everyone. They are almost in the kill zone. Wait for my command.”

  Brill’s defenders waited until the Green soldiers were fully exposed in the middle of the field, then emerged from the spider holes they had dug on either side of the Communications Center. In three brutal minutes, they annihilated the attackers. Not one attacker survived, and the field was littered with blinking orange troops.

  That still left some seventy Green and Gold troops in the hills, led by the limping Gold commander. Brill got on the radio and gave an order, and the small teams he had hidden in the woods formed a line behind the stragglers. The Blue troops crept stealthily behind the attacking forces as the Gold commander led them to the copse of trees near the communications center. When they arrived, the Gold commander was mystified to see so many of the attack force FOF in the field below him, with no Blue soldiers in sight. Had they been driven off? Was the communications center his for the taking? Cautiously, wary of a trap, the attack force moved from the copse and formed a wide skirmish line. Behind them, unseen, the Blue soldiers who had been following them took up firing positions in the trees.