Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  "We don't see battlefields, because we are prepared," she said. "The Pekingese will not start a war, because they know they can't win. And in the betting pools, all the smart money says that we won't see anything bigger than a few squads in a border skirmish, or a couple of ships trading torpedoes at long range, because we are prepared."

  "However," Morbius said, "at least some of that supposedly smart money is now paying off its bets. Last night we saw six skirmishes, each of platoon size, in one night. And several platoons on each side are not pleased with the outcomes. My countrymen turn to me...and our mutual friends...for wise advice and counsel. And one type of really bad advice is that 'suddenly everything is different', which is never the case. And another type of bad advice is 'nothing has or can change; keep doing what we have always done'."

  Sandra looked bemused. "At least none of the smart money is mine. But doesn't that kind of bracket all the choices?"

  "If it didn't, it was supposed to. Bad advice is wrong advice, and any particular advice will be wrong sooner or later," Morbius said. "Now, there were six skirmishes, one of which was settled at range with lots of artillery, three of which looked reasonably well for us, and two in which the Pekingese should not be unhappy. But if the Pekingese shot up border posts and ran, perhaps they are happy about three of them. So I have a rough schedule of where you need to be, when...starting this afternoon."

  EASTERN TERRACE

  THE PALAZZO MORBIUS

  RUTLAND, MASSACHUSETTS

  July 22, 2174, 7:32 P.M. EST

  "The Massachusetts people were polite," Sandra concluded. "They were grateful I appeared for the memorial services for the forward observer, surprised they'd been attacked, nice to visitors afterward. I listened hard. I didn't hear anything I didn't already know." She slammed one fist into the other palm. "The Alabama people--They didn't want to talk. They'd had a lot of people die. They didn't exactly blame the Girl Guides in front of them. Not quite. But you could tell. They thought that if there'd been a MinuteBoy troop in front of them, nothing would have gone wrong. They never said anything against the Bella Abzug people. They just remembered other places, when things had gone better. Except half of them, when I said nothing except sympathy, started talking about DisUnity right off, and how it should be changed, so they had unified command over the Girl Guides, like they'd been primed with the line. And they wanted no one near the battle site--which you can understand. They're working out exactly what happened. Why? How to do better next time?"

  "That is what they said," Morbius agreed. "Your experiences with the various women's groups were considerably more positive. Of course, they had simpler problems to think about. The Women's Popular Army people let the Chinese in, slammed the door behind them, and stomped them flat. MinuteGirls did a variation. Even the Girl Guides did well--though if not for that one young lady, the body count would not have been so unbalanced in their favor."

  "We will be getting a stack of documents, by and by," Sandra announced. She stretched. She had had three very long days, and could see more leading out into the distance. "The Intelligence Corporations are pooling collected data and doing separate studies. From what I can tell, the Pekingese had no novel weapons, were not particularly invisible when you looked for them, didn't have heavy weapons support or preparation..."

  "Their camouflage gear, at night, seems to be perfectly respectable," Morbius said. "Not so good as ours, but good enough they penetrated weaker points in our line. And the Men's...they have charge of line detectors, and said nothing about them not working. That is interesting. Perhaps I sent the wrong person to talk to them...Not your fault, but some of those people just won't talk to a woman. I can't send Grant by himself, too obvious. I know another choice. I just have to call in a favor. And I have something else for you. Though it will involve a bit of travel, a few hundred light years of it."

  FLYING CRANE SPA

  VLADIVOSTOCK, KHAMCHATKA

  UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN

  July 27, 2174, 7:00 PM HLT

  Grant Thomas leaned back in a couch in the conference room. His TabletComp and workspaces were spread across half the table. Dinner with the Cadre had been a chance to catch his breath. They'd been happy to talk about something other than the ChiComm border incursions. He'd been on the run for three days, seeing one attack site after the next, speaking to everyone involved. The Morbius name worked wonders as an opener. He'd been warned the 18th Alabama was pained as well as touchy, but he had officially been escorting Captain Zero himself. He had asked questions of his own, and smoothed Grant's questions. Grant wished he understood why Captain Zero had asked some of them.

  Yesterday, someone had slipped a note into one of the datadisks he'd been given. This Conference Room, sometime in a three hour time window, and a list of names: The three women from the Bella Abzug Brigade who'd been in the thick of the action. The instructions said to wear a green and gold neckerchief today, to mark that he'd received the message and would be there. He'd had two hours of complete quiet, trying to understand what he had learned. A Morbius Internship was a wonderful learning experience, but it was not intended to leave you any time at all for yourself. At that intention it very definitely succeeded.

  The door slid open behind him. A workingsurface without a nonreflec coating was an antique. But propped correctly, field at black, it made a fine mirror, letting him see behind him without turning his head. It was the expected three women, without an escort. He allowed that the chaperonage rule was extremely obsolete, especially given that all three of them had their hideout knives, side arm, and probably several more lethal items. The one in the hoverchair at least couldn't use hand to hand. He stood, turned, and smiled. He wasn't sure what vehicle mounted weapon was masked to one side of the hoverchair, but it looked likely to be an insultingly large diameter if he were the target.

  "Miss Schumacher, I presume?" Rank precedes beauty, he decided, no matter what lookers the other two were. Though Schumacher would probably be as pretty without the casts. He wondered why Gustaphson would call his opening 'Outdated. Reactionary. Positively Victorian.' Which Russian had Victoriana been?

  "That's me. Dreadstar," answered the brunette in the hoverchair, a grin on her face. "And this is Melissa Moriarty -- Stars," she gestured at the short, pale complexioned woman. "You've met Rachel Goldsmith -- Wonderchick." Wonderchick had been Grant's personal security escort, the past three days. Apparently she'd earned it by leaving behind the largest bodycount. He'd have to ask Sandra; he really was not clear how Girl Guides settled such questions. Wonderchick was black-haired, tall, solidly built, definitely worth an exchange of smiles when they were not elsewise busy.

  Grant took their hands in turn. "I reserved this room for extended workspace and for the overhead screens -- which I've been careful to use. No one else knows we're here," he announced. "You had something you wanted to tell me. Something private. What's up?"

  "We'll listen to your questions first," announced Monica Schumacher. "Settle them so you can hear ours. Something was really bothering you, all the time you were here. I could tell on tape, even without Wonderchick reporting."

  "You had a 'what is this?' tone, like things didn't make sense," Melissa Moriarty continued. "What was there to not make sense?"

  Rachel Goldsmith folded her arms across her chest, her smile enigmatic.

  "The truth?" he asked. They nodded. "Everything. It's all unreasonable. The ChiComms started by marching whole platoons across the border. It's not right," Grant said. "And no one sees it. Even Captain Zero didn't."

  "The ChiComms were showing off," Monica announced. "I wouldn't bet Captain Zero didn't see. You may have asked his questions for him."

  "They knew where to show off," Grant countered. Cadre had not been interested in this sort of question, when he had asked it. Popular Army, people up the line in any branch, had not been interested in the question. "How?"

  "Infiltration. They know where the border is, roughly how deep to go. Is there a puzzle?"
Monica settled back in her hover chair, wishing she could scratch her arm and legs. The doctors had assured her the itch was in her brain, caused by her cast, and would go away when the nerves finished reknitting.

  Grant tapped his fingers on the table. Was everyone out here blind to the obvious? "Now, if Cadre told you to do to the ChiComms what they tried to do to you, would you start out marching your whole unit into China? Or would you send out someone by themselves, or some Tarantulas, to reconnoitre the defenses?"

  "Wasps first," Melissa said. "I keep the electronic recce permanently updated. Then a few volunteers."

  "Tarantulas. Repeatedly," Monica said. "Over months, and the whole border. Find the traps behind the looks-soft spots. Even my 14-year-old brother would do that."

  "But that's not what they did," Melissa objected. "They sent a whole platoon."

  "I think that's what he meant," Rachel said. "They did like something your brother would call like totally dumb. Like I said after debrief. They could have sent someone dangerous, like the two guys I gutted. By themselves. Those two by themselves would have hurt someone. Or they could have sent two divisions. They pulled this MinuteDad stunt instead."

  "When they had a billion people, two centuries ago, back before the Partition War, they did things like this, didn't they? Use masses of people where few would have done? But they're a small country now. Fifty million people," Monica observed.

  "I knew it. I knew it. We should have checked," Melissa announced annoyedly. "But no one believed me."

  "What?" Grant asked.

  "That's what we came to tell you about. And I think you've found it, except working top down, not bottom up. The defense grid ghosts," Melissa explained.

  "I believed you, Stars," Rachel said. "Got us both a week's extra duty, too."

  "Grid ghosts?" Grant's interest ramped up. Morbius had been specific about pursuing references to the border defense grid, even though there was no reason to suppose that it was ineffective.

  "For the last year," Monica explained, "there's been a glitch in the new border security system. Only in the worst weather. Snowstorms. Torrential rains. Up north, sandstorms. You get hits, like someone was passing through. But traces start inside the border, and vanish."

  "What happened when you go out to look?" Grant asked. "Was anyone there?"

  "In bad weather?" Monica asked. "People went out afterwards, didn't find anything. Of course, ghosts were always early in the blizzard."

  "A couple times," Melissa said. "They found a ChiComm patrol. Two-to-four guys. Ponchos. Gauss Rifles. ChiComms never fired a round, even when fired on. Every time, ChiComms thought they were on their side of the border. They do not use modern land navigation tools, not at all. And they apologized a lot for getting lost."

  "They found the ChiComms when the weather let up unexpectedly," Rachel reminded. "One day we had a ghost. Our other training tour. Weather was great for training, I thought. Cadre said stay warm inside. So I thought 'what's a little grelking freezing torrential rain' and went hunting."

  "Strictly unauthorized," Monica said. "Cadre passed a hippo."

  "We went out," Melissa reminded. "Taped them walking by. Except my headcam had a glitch, and Wonderchick's--well, you went to ground in a hurry."

  "You can see them, easy, even if the lens was a bit muddy," Rachel remarked. "And you lined up their path with our detectors, showed we mostly weren't picking them up."

  "No one believed us," Melissa said.

  "I said we should all start going out all the time, even if the MinuteDads got a bit wet sometimes," Rachel said.

  "You could have been more tactful," Monica noted. "Maybe people would have listened. I thought you'd gotten the troop a month's special duty."

  "Only the two of us," Melissa recalled.

  "I should've zapped them, not just taped them," Rachel announced. "There were only like five or six. Let the MinuteDads claim the bodies are fake, too."

  "That's a lot," Monica said. "You get a couple by surprise, then you're outnumbered."

  "Taifun. Single shot. They'd've been down," Rachel said. Her companions crossed their arms. "Hey, I put it back in the armory afterwards. 'Special Equipment for Special Circumstances.' It's in the regs."

  "Major Rubenstein would have apoplexy if she found out," Monica whispered. "We only checked out on them last month."

  "Go back a bit," Grant asked. "What are 'detector ghosts'? They're not in the reports I've seen."

  "Border security systems got upgraded last year," Monica said. "First time in fifty years. They started seeing things. Then the MinuteDads and the manufacturers decided to have a farting contest -- whose fault is this? -- to settle who got to fix it. Every fault was logged, very carefully. To prove the system's broken. Along with what the patrols found when they checked afterwards."

  "There's a log?" Grant asked. "Do you have a copy?"

  "On my CompTablet," Melissa announced. She gave the machine a few instructions. A 2x3 yard flatscreen lowered itself from the ceiling. "If we shove onto the couch we can all see it." Grant found himself wedged between Rachel and the end of the couch, his legs pushed in more tightly than the width of the couch demanded. Gentle pushback got a positive response.

  "The border area covered by detectors is highlighted in blue. Reported ghosts are in pink," Melissa said. The border turned purple. "Traces saturate at this magnification. Let's do a blowup of a piece, enough to see a topo projection. This is the official record -- I downloaded it." The flatscreen showed hills and woods in sharp relief. Pink trails draped across the entire border terrain like tinsel on a Christmas tree. "We looked at a bunch of trails. They're all places where you'd expect infiltrators to skulk. Often, here are some examples, you take different tracks on different days, and they line up and overlap." More sections of the border appeared, now with pink strips forming long lines. "That's the border, I say those are infiltrators, and the border is very porous."

  "No one listened?" Grant asked. Speak of screwups of the first magnitude. This took the whole pastry shoppe.

  "It's well known to be a hardware fault -- blame the contractor -- or a software fault -- blame MinuteDads who got their hands on software authority like almost 100 years ago. Ask the MinuteDads or the contractor. Traces line up, they say, not because infiltrators go places where detectors will be weak, but because ghosts appear where noise is worst because detectors are weak. This is all an illusion, they say," Melissa explained. "But here's the data, with tons of notes I added."

  "Someone listened, didn't they?" Grant asked. "You didn't sit in your pillboxes."

  "I made them listen," Monica announced. "And 'what sort of grelking soldiers are afraid of getting wet?' ‘What if the enemy attacks under the cover of umbrellas? What do I do? Ask them to wait for the sun to come out?' persuaded Cadre we should go out in the rain. That was Wonderchick’s line, originally."

  "It was kind of contagious," said Melissa. "Of course, I did find the old 'through rain, through sleet, through hail and mud the Girl Guides are on the march' recruiting ads -- from middle of the last century -- and slipped them onto the Harbin State CommNet training channels. That put the idea in people's heads. Didn't change any minds, not by itself. But it made the folks on our side sound natural." The other two girls glanced sharply at Melissa.

  Grant pretended not to notice. "That's absolutely right," he interrupted. Sandra would know what the stares meant. He'd watched Sandra's group train enough. Monsoon: excellent training weather. Blizzard: Fabulous training weather. Freezing rain and hail on deep half-frozen mud: Absolutely perfect training weather. MinuteBoys tended to be a bit more practical. Was Sandra's group unusual? "So when you saw ghosts, you laid a ghost trap. And caught ghosts."

  "This time the cameras worked," Monica answered. "This time I didn't have cadre leaning over my shoulder. It worked."

  "May I have a crossload, all about ghosts?" Grant asked, waving his own tabletcomp.

  "That's why I wanted to talk to you," Melissa said. "And
these two went along. Here's the cross-load." Status icons flickered across her tabletcomp.

  "Do you have another surprise up your sleeve, too?" Grant asked. "This one was pretty big."

  "Oh. No," Melissa answered. "We had one objective, and we just scored. Do you want some help reading the files? Shall I come upstairs with you to explain? I'd be happy to."

  "Aahh," Grant could well imagine where she was leading. He had been collecting more than enough looks from their platoon, the last few days, when they thought he was distracted. The pressure on his leg increased noticeably. He had no objection to the direction, not at all, but sometimes there were sound reasons not to advance. There was a time when playing dumb was definitely the way to go. "I'm sure it's perfectly clear. I'll mail you if I've got questions." He paused. "If there aren't more gems on the ChiComms?"

  They shook their heads. "Better no one notices we talked. Not yet," Monica announced.

  "In that case, I'd really better be getting to work. Stars? Dreadstar? Wonderchick? Thanks for the heads-up and the files. I'd never have guessed about the ghosts." Wait, he decided, until he held the file under the nose of the IonEU rep next time they met. Barnes had really gotten on his nerves. She was obsequious to Morbius, condescending to Sandy, and had only stopped hitting on him when he mentioned drinking at the local bar that served men who like men. He hadn't quite lied about drinking there, though on-premises he had been scrupulous about wearing the small violet collar tab that meant 'straight but not narrow'. 'No sign of foreign border pressure', indeed. He slipped from between Rachel and the edge of the couch, not that he'd at all minded Rachel wedging him into place, and waved good-bye. She had played dumb when he had used the file transfers to transfer his room code to her wristcomp. He’d have to see if that worked.