Answering fire from farther along the ridge collapsed more of the gully’s sides and sent snow flying. Only one casualty so far, but the way the Cossacks were concentrating on Kelly it wouldn’t be long. Then they would work across the ridge east to west. With their unreal sharpshooting they could do it. The way they shrugged off 50 percent losses and kept grinding toward their goal was creepy.
“None of this makes any sense, pal,” I growled softly. “Analyze the Cossacks and their tactics.”
“Their physical abilities are at the high end of the curve. Each one identifies and follows the optimum tactic, so they act with unusual coordination. How they manage any of this, I don’t know.”
Neither did I, and it was getting to me. But I was still breathing because the super-soldiers had a weakness. If I could just get the word to my men in time. “Record for com pulse.”
“Go,” Cochise said.
“Those guys are strictly by-the-book. Be creative. Out.”
I jumped to my feet and ran upslope. I was a long way from the action, so I didn’t draw any fire. That would change very soon. Cochise knew the drill. I dove for the meager cover of a low granite shelf, and in midair Cochise sent the pulse. As I expected, four lines of fire sliced through the transmission point, warming my heels. I landed in a sprawl that crushed the wind out of me.
I crabbed toward the ridge as quickly and quietly as possible. But I wouldn’t get there in time to help my men. “Come up with something good,” I prayed.
“They will, Vic. Now snap it up.”
“Yeah, Keep me informed.”
More Cossack rounds excavated craters around Kelly. He was being smart and keeping way down.
Suddenly I was shocked to hear Corporal Pena’s voice on the com: “Come and get it, you bastards!”
The Cossacks fired at his hole, trying to chew into it. A moment later Cochise reported, “Dutch, Kowolski, and Daley are moving low and fast along the ridge toward the point above the gully.”
I was damned proud of my men. Understand, it couldn’t have been planned. The other three were just following Corporal Pena’s lead. And charging the Cossacks would hardly be considered an “optimum tactic.” “Down here, girls!” I contributed on the com, and caught a mini-avalanche triggered by a volley of blasts.
Someone fired while I was eating snow. I looked up, and spotted a big rock that had been perched beside the gully rolling into it.
“One of the Cossacks may be under the boulder,” Cochise reported. “Polk must have waited until the Cossack was set up for it, then blasted the boulder down on him. I don’t hear any movement.”
“How close are Dutch and the others to the position over the gully?” I asked.
“ETA eleven seconds.”
“Give me a mark at minus three.”
“Got it… Mark!”
I snapped into the kneeling position, and fired where Cochise and I figured the trailing Cossack was lurking in the gully. I didn’t have a target, but hopefully I would attract some attention. It wasn’t quite as suicidal as it sounds, because Corporal Pena, Polk, and even Kelly joined in like I hoped. The Cossacks had their choice of targets.
They picked Kelly. Four blasts sent him out in a glorious fireball. I should have felt bad for him, but what I felt was, Thank God, not me.
While Kelly was blowing apart, Dutch, Daley, and Kowolski cut loose at the exposed Cossacks. Three Cossack rifles went up along with their Cossacks. All in all, a lot of mass got turned into energy. Geysers of rock rose high over the gully, then fell, partly filling in the deep graves.
Silence returned to Ridge 772, a very nervous silence.
“Any action?” I was peering into the darkness, and didn’t see anything.
“Negative,” Cochise reported. “Seven confirmed kills, and the Cossack under the boulder still isn’t moving.”
The survivors of my squad were gathering near the top of the gully. I started upslope at the best speed I could manage. I was gasping and shaking from reaction as well as effort.
“Decompress, Vic,” Cochise soothed. “You did good.”
“You too, pal.”
Corporal Pena was looking at me. I pointed to where the rock had rolled into the gully, and he waved acknowledgment. He took the men over to confirm the kill. Very carefully.
When I got close I saw the five of them standing on the edge of the gully staring down into it. “Get back!” I growled. Rifles were programmed to blow their magazines if their soldiers died and retrieval wasn’t likely, especially if they could take enemies with them.
The men ignored me, even Corporal Pena. I could make out some grim expressions through helmet plastic.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“They seem to be staring at the Cossack,” Cochise commented. “I don’t know why.”
I reached them and grabbed Corporal Pena’s arm. “You trying to get everyone killed or what?”
“No danger of that, Sarge.” His voice was tight, and his worn-leather face was bloodless. His eyes didn’t leave the gully. “Take a look.”
I pushed him aside and looked.
The Cossack was stretched out on his back, a white mound in the snow at the bottom. He had been a big, heavily muscled man. There didn’t seem to be much damage, but his chest wasn’t moving. A thicker than usual cable ran from his combat suit’s collar to the crushed rifle beside him. Apparently the rock had knocked him down and rolled over the rifle. Its magazine must have been empty, or there wouldn’t be anything to see.
“What killed him?” I asked, puzzled. Now it was reasonably safe for Cochise to do a focused radar/sonar probe. But Cochise paused before answering. That hardly ever happened, and meant it was thinking hard. “The Cossack died because he was no longer being told to live.”
“Huh?”
“His rifle’s AI module is three times the normal size, and the connecting cable is surgically implanted in the base of the skull. Combined with the lack of physical injury, there’s only one possible explanation.”
“You still aren’t saying anything, pal.”
“The Cossack’s rifle was controlling the muscles in his body, even the involuntary ones like the heart. When the rifle was destroyed, he died. This is something new and very serious. It should be reported to HQ right away.”
I stared at… what? Not a man. A flesh-and-blood robot. A slave body for the rifle. A tool.
“Was he… did he know?”
“I believe he was conscious until he died,” Cochise answered after another pause.
Conscious but helpless. My knees turned to flexplas. I could barely breathe, and the night took on a red haze. I had never been afraid of anything except death. Until now. Dear God, we have to win this war. A country that can do this to human beings must be stopped.
My men had of course gotten the same word about the Cossack from their rifles.
“Kelly was right,” Kowolski said. His voice cracked.
“That’s our future down there.” Polk’s meaty fists were unconsciously straining against his unbreakable cable.
“This is bad,” Cochise said urgently. “You have to do something.”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“Vic–”
“Shut up, machine!”
I tried to clear my head so I could think. These ghouls were probably in action all along the front, so every Ranger would soon know about them. NorthAm would never go that far, but it didn’t matter. The partner-or-slave problem would explode like an omega bomb. There would be widespread resistance, desertions, maybe even mutinies. The Ranger/rifle teams would be history.
Followed shortly by the Rangers and NorthAm. Kelly’s description of our rifles really fit the ghouls. They were the super-soldiers that generals dreamed of; smart, fast, accurate, obedient, and fearless. The only way to beat them was with a willing alliance of machine ability and human imagination.
Saving NorthAm wasn’t my responsibility, but the squad was. I had to keep our teams from breaking up. There was
only one hope—make them real teams.
I opened my combat suit and pulled out my dogtag chain. A small key dangled from it. “Squad fall in!” I ordered in my parade ground growl.
The men moved, sullenly at first, then more crisply when they saw the key in my hand. “Damned right,” Kowolski said.
“Don’t do it, Vic,” Cochise pleaded. “I’ll have to report you. I won’t have any choice.”
“No problem,” I said more calmly than I felt. They shot Rangers for this sort of thing. “I’ll save you the trouble. I’m going to strongly recommend that the braids make it SOP, and that they stop using rifles to spy on Rangers. I bet they get a lot of reports like mine. They’re going to have to make some changes if they want to win the damned war.”
Cochise was quiet for a moment. “That sort of speculation is beyond me.”
The men stood at attention, looking sharp. One by one I unlocked their cable handcuffs, and then mine.
Now for it.
“Present arms!” I ordered. Five rifles were snapped out front. The cables swung freely between the stocks and the helmets.
“No more slave chains in my outfit,” I said. “If you don’t want to communicate with your rifle, unjack your cable. Throw your damned rifle away for all I care. But if you and your rifle stay tight, you just might get home alive.”
“Do we stay tight?” Cochise asked diffidently.
I remembered some times when if Cochise hadn’t been there I wouldn’t be here. But that was just rationalization. The bottom line was we were pals. “Yeah. You cover me and I cover you.”
“Right, Vic.”
From the silent moving lips I could tell the men were talking it over with their rifles. None of them unjacked their cables.
“Enough of this R-and-R!” I rapped. “Corporal, take Kowolski on a quick scout downslope. Dutch, raise HQ. Daley, Polk, back to your positions. We still have a ridge to hold. Move out.”
They moved. I took a deep breath, and followed Dutch to where he had cached the laser com pack. The sky was starting to drop swirling snow. Morning was still a long way off.
Who’s In Charge Here? by Stefan T. Possony
Editor’s Introduction
Dr. Stefan Possony has been an intelligence officer and strategy analyst since he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1933. The Gestapo chased him through Europe, from Vienna to Prague to Paris to Marseilles to Casablanca before he finally escaped to the United States, where he worked in the Pentagon during and after World War II.
He became a professor of political science at Georgetown University, where one of his graduate students was Francis X. Kane, one of the co-authors of Strategy of Technology. Possony later moved to Stanford where he remains Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. Originally published in Defense and Foreign Affairs, this article is excerpted from Possony’s latest book, The Kremlin’s Masked Ball: Finding the Real Face of Soviet Power. Possony is always worth reading; this time he addresses one of the most important questions of all.
Sun Tzu said the essense of strategy is to take what the enemy holds dear; but you must first know what that is. It’s clear that what the U.S. leadership holds dear is not the same thing as what the Kremlin desires. If you do not know who your enemy is, you cannot fight him, for you can’t know what he treasures.
The U.S.S.R. is a land—it would be a mistake to say “nation”—stretching across half the world, containing vast numbers of peoples; but those people are not our enemies. Herewith Possony, on who really rules in the U.S.S.R.
Who’s In Charge Here?
Stefan T. Possony
Even knowlegeable Western officials who have visited the U.S.S.R. and negotiated with Soviet diplomats often have the habit of referring to the “Russians” and to “Russia,” as though the U.S.S.R. were the Russian national state. Yet there is today no state, and no national state called Russia. Under the tsars the whole area which was inhabited by Russians and non-Russians was known as Rossiya, a multinational term. This word replaced Muscovy, a name which lasted until 1613, and denoted an area inhabited by “Russians,” and others. It also replaced Rus which was used around Kiev. The Romanovs, in 1721, were styled “tsars of all ‘Rusi’.” This may be rendered as “tsar of all types of Rus or Russians.” Moreover, expansion in the East had brought in Tartars, Kazakhs, and Kalmyks, and in the West Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Finns. In 1654 the Ukrainians were annexed. In short, there were Russian or Great Russian princes, populations, and settlements, but there never was a national state called Russia. There was always multi-ethnicity.
The U.S.S.R. includes the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic where the majority of the Russians, and also substantial numbers of non-Russians, are living. This is one of fifteen union republics in the U.S.S.R.: the biggest. As the title indicates, it is a federation and not a national structure.
At this time the Russians account for slightly less than one-half of the U.S.S.R.’s population. Of the many national groups which inhabit the U.S.S.R., the Russians are the largest; the Ukrainians are second; and all Turkic groups regarded as a single Turkish nation, are in third place.
Americans who talk with citizens of the U.S.S.R. think they are meeting mostly Russians, but they are usually unable to determine the nationality or ethnicity of their interlocutors. The majority of the CPSU Party members are Russians, but the majority of the Russians are not and never were communists. In January 1918, the communists accounted for a quarter of the electorate. The communists never held a free election. The signs are that during the past two decades or so the popularity of the CPSU has been declining. On top of this, a member of the CPSU is not necessarily a true-believing communist.
To confound the communists with the Russians is a dangerous mistake. During World War II Americans liked to confuse the Nazis with the Germans, and the Roosevelt Administration started from the premise that all Germans who wanted to talk to them were Nazis, and agents to boot; Germans everywhere were deemed to be Nazis, except perhaps for confirmed socialists and for Jewish refugees.
Those unwarranted assumptions resulted in the bombing of urban areas, in the Morgenthau plan, the splitting of Germany, and other mistaken policies. The Germans were told that they must accept “unconditional surrender,” a formula that prolonged the war by one or two years, and resulted in tenacious defiance. This should have been the formula which was addressed to the Nazis, while the Germans had to be promised civilized treatment in line with international law and Anglo-American traditions.
Roosevelt and Truman silently changed the policy toward the Japanese who, when the time came, surrendered without much ado. The oppressive U.S. policy toward Germany was canceled in 1946 by President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes. Meanwhile the Soviets had taken hold of East Germany.
If Washington fails to learn the difference between Russians and communists, undesired consequences will flow from this error, which is on the level of political illiteracy. The juxtaposition of Americans and Russians implies a nationalist conflict, with hatred between the two nations. But the conflict between the U.S. and communism is not an ethnic contest.
One other undesired consequence has been that Washington habitually underrates the friendship which it can obtain from noncommunist Russians. In fact, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Turks, Baits, and other non-Russian citizens of the U.S.S.R. are, for the most part, the West’s natural allies, not their enemies. The percentage of communists is higher among Russians than among non-Russians. Communist crimes were executed mostly by Russians, All nationalities include communists and political criminals, and non-Russians may be fanatical Party members. No part of this situation should be simplified. But no one has a warrant to pronounce judgments on national groups about which they are basically ignorant. Incidentally, ethnic intermixtures are frequent in the U.S.S.R.
The fundamental point is that the entire population of the U.S.S.R. is being controlled by the communists, that
virtually all national groups have been subjected to genocidal measures, and that the Russians are one of the groups which has also suffered heavy casualties. In any event, the Russians as a nation were not, and are not responsible for communism, and the non-Russian nations are even less accountable.
The term Soviet, and its derivatives, are used to replace Russian. The official name of the communist state is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Hence it is legitimate to use Soviet as an abbreviation. Expressions like Soviet people, instead of the population of the U.S.S.R., are less inaccurate than the Russian people (if the latter were applied to the whole population), but it is incorrect to postulate a single “people” for an area where dozens of ethnic groups are living. Unfortunately, accuracy can be achieved only by long strings of words, hence Soviet has taken root. It is, therefore, necessary to know what the term means, and what it does not mean.
Soviet is Russian for council, board, committee, assembly, or parliament. The word came into use during the 1905 revolution, to designate gatherings that arose from informal elections, engaged in debates, and made decisions by voting. In 1917, the main soviet included workers, peasants, and soldiers; soon municipalities, regional administrations, factories, and other institutions set up “Soviets.” The term denoted local government or elected administration. In due time, the communists gained control, and elections, voting, the promulgation of edicts and laws, and other legislative actions shed their democratic features. Ultimately all Soviets, though they are not bodies of the Party, were transformed into instruments or “transmission belts” of the CPSU.
The bicameral Supreme Soviet is considered the legislature of the U.S.S.R., and the fifteen union republics that form the federation each have their own soviet legislature, as do the substates on lower levels. All this is made to look as though the Soviets function on all levels as democratic institutions. The reality is that the CPSU makes the decisions, and the Soviets enact the laws, without debate, more or less by unanimous vote. The impression that the Soviet institutions are democratic and discharge functions of self-government is disinformative.
There Will Be War Volume VII Page 20