Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  "Dreadstar, One Leader here. Group Five execution nominal. Three teams found storage bunkers. One team found empty space -- used earlier by people. Two teams are still searching," Teresa said coolly. "Recommend you redeploy Five Reserve to Five Command position, say points 19K, 19Q."

  "Do it, my authority. Thanks, Teresa. Are the rest of your people clear?" Dreadstar dropped Teresa's answer to the voice-to-text recorder. "Five Leader," she said, "I'm deploying reserves to support your position. We're doing a situation update." Checking the VTT, she found that most of Group One's people had found small groups of ChiComms, three or four at each location, none expecting trouble until they were invited to surrender. Two groups had resisted, with rapidly fatal consequences for themselves. For Wonderchick's detachment, life had become considerably more interesting, and Teresa had sent them her reserves.

  Janelle's report came up on her screen. Ten minutes ago, two officers and a Sergeant Major of the 18th Alabama had appeared at Ruiz's position, been allowed to pass by the sentries, and demanded to take over the operation. They demanded command of the entire Special Formation, which they seemed to have confused with Group Five. More of their friends had followed.

  "Formation Leader, I have a Command Emergency," intruded a shaking Patricia Ruiz. Her headcam showed the same MinuteDads and a half-dozen of their friends facing into the Group Command Position. Their weapons were leveled. They were facing four Girl Guides and two MinuteGirls, also with leveled weapons. Dreadstar's pulse doubled. The situation had just moved from 'heads up' to 'in my lap.'

  "Twenty-three," screamed one of the men. Colonel, Dreadstar recognized. CO, 18th Alabama, the screen-servile put up as a margin note.

  "What's he want?" shouted Dreadstar. No! Stupid wrong question. "What's the emergency?"

  "Formation Leader," bellowed Ruiz, "18th Alabama demands it take over the operation. From this post. Now. Their Colonel's counting down from thirty. At one he gets command or he opens fire." Under her shout, Ruiz's voice quavered. "Ma'am, what are my orders, ma'am?" Ruiz whispered.

  Dreadstar cursed under her breath. Was it a stupid bluff? She had teams under fire, and some MinuteDads were staging a farting contest? Wonderchick and Team 8 were getting massive reinforcements as fast as possible; shouting over their shoulders would not help. "Group Leader," she paused, toggling her speech from Ruiz's bonephone to every speaker in the tent, "Group Leader, put me up on your primary flatscreen." Her voice echoed through every computer speaker in the tent.

  "Begging the Formation Leader's pardon, but it's lying on the ground." Ruiz said. Pause. "With Colonel Ryerson's foot on it."

  Dreadstar pinched her nose. "Put it on. I imagine the Colonel can find his own foot. He seems accurate enough when he shoots at it."

  Dreadstar's uplink to Troop came up to text. "Rubenstein here. I'm here if you have questions. Do us proud."

  "Where's my image?" Dreadstar shouted at no one in particular. Another screen came on. It had to be the main flatscreen. She was looking almost straight up at Ryerson. "Colonel Ryerson, I presume? And what may I do for you?"

  "You the real formation leader?" he asked. "Ah ask the girl outside who in charge, and she say Missy Ruiz here ran you people."

  "I imagine the woman outside informed you that Miss Ruiz was in command of this Group." Almost pause. "Apparently you don't know what chain of command is." The Colonel's face turned even ruddier. "Command Team, Five Group! Colonel is speaking to me! And only me! No, you may not go to fighting words on my behalf IS THAT CLEAR!" The Colonel's last answer had traversed the 'fighting words' line at least twice. Dreadstar was briefly thankful that WonderChick was someplace else. On a bad-hair day she would have let the Colonel get to 'Missy', and kicked in first the Colonel's knees and then his face. Finally, the Colonel's gonads would have gotten themselves relocated upwards to someplace near his throat via the gastro-cardiac route.

  "VERY GOOD!" Rubenstein's two words appeared on screen.

  "Don't give me chain of command pigshit!" Ryerson screamed. "You are a seventeen year old girl! You are commanding sixty people in eleventeen places! By yourself. You are a total effing idjit, and no girl should command people anyhow, especially not no girl your effing age, especially not with no chain of command and eleven units, is that effing clear, you clueless dipstick?! You give me command of this here operation before I count down to one, dumbass, or I take it away from you."

  Dreadstar began whispering orders. Her servile swept her voice and lip motions from Ryerson's flatscreen. She smiled at the Colonel, praying that formation would not ignore her last order to them. If Ryerson had used words like that toward Major Rubenstein, Dreadstar knew she would have shot Ryerson, no matter what her orders from Rubenstein had been. She was almost calm. "First, I'm nineteen, not seventeen. Second, I passed K-series tactics courses with flying colors. Third, if I don't have any chain of command,"

  "You don't have one, you dummy! It's you and them, and my eleven year old grandson could do better with both hands in his pockets playing with ..." The Colonel's language became increasingly colorful.

  Dreadstar thanked the One G*d that she'd experienced Rubenstein's more volcanic lectures. Then she shouted back. It was such a shame that she had output amplifiers at his end, while her serviles damped his shrieks to a monotone. She cranked the output amplifiers to maximum. "...then how can I have Group Leader Team positions, LIKE THE ONE YOU'RE STANDING IN, YOU WITLESS DORK! Also, since you apparently can't count above ten without dropping your pants, I don't have sixty people in nine places. It's three dozen places, four hundred people. Not counting the three autocannon. The autocannon tracking your two assholes. Yes, yours! Group Five, visible autocannon targeting beams now! One on the asshole under his trousers. Two on the asshole above his neck." Three large, bright illuminated circles began flashing on the named points of the Colonel's anatomy. The Colonel sputtered to a stop.

  "I don't care if you're Captain Grelking Zero himself! YOU DON'T COME INTO MY FORMATION AND THREATEN MY GRELKING PEOPLE! Team! Reserves! Sentries! Your targets are this piece of dung and his grelking formation! If this fool starts counting down again, open fire immediately! Blow them away! That is a direct order!" The Colonel's men began edging away from him. "As for you, Colonel, you are breaking the Disunited Command Doctrine, the Independent Volunteer Doctrine, and the Militia Act of, of..." What was that year?

  "MILITIA REORGANIZATION ACT OF 2052." Major Rubenstein's words appeared on her flatscreen.

  "...Militia Reorganization Act of 2052, as Amended. Those are criminal laws. Get out of my grelking tent this grelking instant, or I'll have you arrested, shackled, and muzzled. And now, if you excuse me, I have some ChiComms to kill." Dreadstar decided that calling him a drunken MinuteDad to his face would have been highly satisfying, but not especially rewarding. Thank G*d she'd listened carefully when class had covered the Disunity Is Strength Doctrine. She could quote chapter and verse why Ryerson was in the wrong. She ostentatiously turned to one side, killed the repeater volume, and began talking into another screen. "Group Two Leader, report." The Colonel's foot stomped down into the flatscreen, momentarily giving her a closeup of his boot. He pivoted and marched out of the tent.

  The sound of released breaths from Group Five's position was all too audible.

  "Major?" Dreadstar whispered.

  "Absolutely perfect, dear," Major Rubenstein answered.

  "Major, could you please find out what that was all about?" Dreadstar asked. "I could ask him myself, but...he might not want to talk to me at the moment."

  "I'll work on it," she answered. "Have to go through channels."

  Dreadstar's eyes were elsewhere. Screens showed the Team Eight ambush had collapsed. The half dozen ChiComms almost on the Team position had been taken in flank by the seriously wounded Team Leader and a MinuteGirl. The ChiComms had retreated quickly, directly into Miss Hong's 8" fire. Reserves were deploying. County Disaster Relief was running a pair of air ambulances straight in to Team Eight's pos
ition, flying nap-of-earth where the ambushers had not been, ignoring possible anti-aircraft from the ChiComms. Dreadstar was sick to her stomach. For five people, those ambulances were almost certainly too late. Not only had she run the largest Girl Guide operation in the past decade, she'd racked up the largest casualty count in a quarter century.

  Groups Two and Four had been nominal. Two MinuteBoys at Target Area Eleven had been wounded clearing a bunker. They'd charged in, not surrounded it and invited a surrender, and the bunker's occupants had tried shooting back. The occupants were now dead or captured. Group Three was scrambling. Team Eight was no longer under heavy fire, the neighbor's rail guns having completely suppressed it. Dreadstar made another note to herself. After she visited the parents of the wounded or worse, she'd have to thank Miss Hong for her support.

  Across the rest of the map, operations were proceeding smoothly. The ChiComms had somehow set up a large network of masked resupply points, barracks, and covert forces on the American side of the border defense zone. Now those positions had been captured, their garrisons captured or taken prisoner. Only hard work and attention to detail had uncovered their activities. Some of their activities, Dreadstar corrected to herself. There was no way the explosives Wonderchick had detonated had been hauled through the security zone on the backs of porters. There were some more security holes, ones no one had located yet.

  She typed a message: "Major Rubenstein, we seem to have a lot of ChiComm prisoners, total of 87 and climbing. I'm sure 'managing bunches of prisoners' was not in the Warfare Law session. But these guys aren't Peace Police; that lesson doesn't apply. Recommendations?"

  The Major answered. "Arrest them all for trespassing. Arrest the ones who shot back for attempted murder. Tell them they will get fair trials, and the Azores Convention promises they won't be hanged unless they murdered non-combatants or raped people or animals. Hand them over to the local County Sheriffs for processing. But give the Sheriffs manpower backup."

  "Done. And notify the Civil Liberties League. The ChiComms need lawyers." Schumacher started aligning a message queue.

  "Civil Liberties.... Right! We're arresting them, there being no war," Rubenstein agreed.

  "By the way," Schumacher said, "We found bases all the way to the rear of the Secondary Security zone, where we stopped looking. There may be bases further to the rear."

  "Yes?" Rubenstein asked. Dreadstar knew that tone. It was patience, the tone preceding 'Guide Schumacher, have you ever considered using the brain cell G*d allegedly gave you?'

  Schumacher thought for a moment. "Servile: Press Release. What I just said about bases further back than we looked." Her servile put a dressed version of her words on a side screen. "Transmit immediate, general channels." Now she'd warned anyone in America who was listening. Non-heirarchical organization would do the rest. Rubenstein beamed.

  Chapter 19

  "To keep our scouts out of mischief, recalling boys and girls will be boys and girls, we follow the same process as other scouting groups, as adopted to the particular form of our eligibility requirements. All Lambda Scouts are sworn pairs, sworn to each other as brother and sister, sworn to protect and guard each other, even at the cost of their own life, and sworn to keep each others' company at all times and protect each other from non-scouting activities not consistent with the principles of scouting."

  ...Lambda Scouts, Charter of Formation, 2032

  MEDICAL FACILITY

  TRAINING BATTALION, BELLA ABZUG BRIGADE

  HARBIN CITY, HARBIN, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  October 23, 2174, 9:45 AM HST

  "Rachel, they say you should be awake by now." The old woman's voice penetrated Rachel Goldsmith's slumbers. Rachel came groggily out of deep sleep, struggling against the soporific drive of the somnifier on her bedstand. She hated the machine, something that only a boy would really need, but medical staff had very much wanted her exactly in dreaming sleep while she recovered from the concussion and internal bruising. Finally the machine chirped crankily and turned off, allowing that she was going to wake up again regardless of its inclinations.

  "Grandma! What are you doing here?" Rachel's head did still hurt. Joints complained when she moved. She made herself smile brightly.

  "I wanted to see what they were doing with my grand-daughter," Murial Goldsmith announced, "and see that they were taking proper care of you and feeding you enough. Not that we are still back in the dark ages, back when patients in hospitals needed relatives or lawyers to watch over them, because hospital staff didn't, but I would feel so guilty if I didn't just check on you a few times, not more than six or eight times a day."

  "Yes, grandmother," Rachel answered, staring intently at her grandmother. It was obvious when her leg was being pulled. "Did you remember to check the leeches, too? You wouldn't want me not to be bled properly, would you?" Rachel tried to keep a straight face.

  "Oh, of course," Grandmother answered. "You do believe me, don't you, about me checking up on them?"

  "Oh, Grandmother, of course. And Mom and Dad were here this morning, and Grandmother Josie sent her love from Ceres and wished she could come to earth," Rachel added. And then staff had put her back to sleep. There were other relatives who had called, lots of them, all worried about her, worried even though the medical report said the microbots would have her scalp back together by tomorrow morning, nothing was seriously damaged, nothing was going to scar, and there was no permanent damage from being bounced repeatedly against rock walls. And if she didn't like having her left arm in a sling for three days while her shoulder recovered, she shouldn't have used the arm to hold four Taifuns while they were detonating.

  "She telephoned me, too, so we talked. But that's not why I'm here," Muriel Goldsmith announced. "It is something important." Her voice became much stiffer.

  "Yes, grandmother?" Rachel asked.

  "It is about grandmother. My grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, on my father's side. Annette Fujiwara." Muriel Goldsmith frowned. "She told no one but me! No one!" Tears came to Muriel Goldsmith's eyes.

  "Grandma? What's wrong?" Rachel asked. Great-great-grandmother Fujiwara had been one of those people who wouldn't adjust to modern medicine, had declined to take antigerontic treatments, and had died of old age.

  "It was 2037. During the Incursion. Grandmother Fujiwara was a student. At Stanford. And the Chinese, the Chinese Division of the Peace Police, came. They saw she was Japanese. And they announced she was a volunteer." Muriel Goldsmith dabbed her eyes. "It was after Americans began shunning them. Their boys couldn't get a decent girl to say hello to them, let alone hold hands. So they made Grandmother their, their comfort woman. For their Police Company." Rachel stiffened. No one in the family had ever said a word. "There were one hundred ninety-seven hundred men. She counted."

  "That's terrible, grandmother. That's absolutely horrible." Rachel reached to hold her grandmother's hands in her own, a very stiff left shoulder objecting painfully. Some things were more important than a little pain.

  "But finally it was over. And finally it was so over that she could fall in love with grandfather, or we wouldn't be here. Except finally, when the doctors offered her the Antigerontic Serum, she said no. She was tired of living with herself. And grandfather said he would stay with her, here and in unity with God, and said no to the serum too. So they both died, died of old age." Muriel Goldsmith's voice fell to a whisper. "The Chinese murdered them both, murdered them both as dead as if they'd shot them. Now, thanks to you, grandmother can sleep in peace! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, unto the children and grandchildren...for what they did to her they have now begun to repay." She began to cry.

  For the first time in many years, Rachel Goldsmith was speechless.

  BATTALION HEADQUARTERS

  TRAINING BATTALION, BELLA ABZUG BRIGADE

  SOUTH HARBIN STATE FOREST

  HARBIN, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  October 25, 2174, 7:45 AM HLT

  "Cadet Shumacher? Th
e Major will see you now." Naomi Roth gestured over her shoulder at a firmly closed door. Monica Schumacher, looking fresh in a newly-pressed dress uniform, marched to the door, knocked twice as protocol dictated, and entered.

  "Cadet Schumacher reporting as ordered, ma'am," she announced. The Major looked as exhausted as Monica felt. The two women exchanged salutes.

  "Monica, sit down. You must be totally exhausted. Five funerals in three days, spread across North America and two other Solar Systems. And they were all good people," said Rubenstein.

  "And they died, because I messed up," a sorrowful Schumacher announced. "If we'd done more reconnaissance, had more Tarantulas out..."

  "Monica, stop blaming yourself. It was an excellent plan. It was totally proportionate to the plausible threat. And you had plenty of reserves. And good command structure. Sometimes combat doesn't turn out as cleanly as you would like." Rubenstein said reassuringly. "And if you hadn't acted, God knows, the ChiComms would have killed many more people. Perhaps even the same people who died."

  "Yes, ma'am," Schumacher was a bit quiet. "And with what I had, I can't find a way that was a lot better, I've been thinking about it enough."

  "You have been thinking about it far too much. The time for a post like that is after everything has settled. But you're right. All your resources were in the right place. And I don't know where Ruiz found the autocannon, though they certainly paid off," Rubenstein noted.

  "I was busy taking care of people. What should I do now?" Schumacher asked. The last few days had been a whirl of stops, visiting families, friends, last rites for the departed. She simply had not had time to keep track of what was happening back in Harbin.

  "The troop prepared a propaganda leaflet--something we can wind-drop across the border on the right day," Rubenstein announced. "It's a really cute historical piece, something the Secretary for Propaganda was happy to clear, no matter how long New Washington usually takes." Rubenstein had met with Secretary Gutierez personally; the two women were equally delighted with the proposal. However, the Secretary for Propaganda was the one person legally allowed to approve broadcasts at foreign nations. Gutierez had been vastly more active than her last dozen predecessors, so that Radio Free Europe, Free Europe Video, and their Asian, African, and South American counterparts now maintained a semi-regular schedule.