David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 13]

by Wings of Hell (lit)

  “Promises, promises,” Query sighed.

  Major General Pradesh Cumberland, Task Force Aguinaldo Chief of Staff, set aside his spoon in disgust. “I don’t know, Anders, this field ration gelatin is just too…too”—he shrugged—“glutinous for my taste.”

  General Anders Aguinaldo laughed. “You only have to eat it so long as those politicians are breathing down our necks.” He shoveled a spoonful of the mass into his mouth. “Goddam, Praddy, reminds me of those lunches old Admiral Porter used to feed us in his mess back at the Heptagon.” He laughed harder. “Something called ‘macaroni’ and, oh, yes, ‘Jell-O.’ Now that Jell-O stuff had the consistency of this but it tasted better.”

  “Christ on a rubber crutch, Anders, don’t you think maybe you and I, in the dark of night, could rustle up something more, more, edible than this crap? I remember these rations from when I was a second lieutenant! I thought they were bad then! Now? Ugh! Do you think they’ll catch on?”

  “You mean that this stuff is twenty years out of date? Oh, yeah. And they know I want them gone. They may be venal, egotistical, self-serving swine, Praddy, but they’re not stupid.” Somehow Aguinaldo had found in storage somewhere on Arsenault a cache of field rations that hadn’t been issued to anyone in nearly two decades. As soon as he learned he was to be the host for the Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding delegation, he ordered the rations served exclusively in his private mess, where the delegation would eat most of their meals. The troops ate modern, Class A rations while in garrison and much more tasty field rations when on maneuvers. Aguinaldo saw no reason why they should suffer because of the senators’ visit.

  “This Colonel Grimmer.” Cumberland shook his head. “I almost strangled him twice this morning. These rations would be ideal for that bastard.” He was referring to Lieutenant Colonel, Retired, Sneedly Grimmer, Senator Query’s senior military aide. Whiplash thin, Grimmer always wore a sour expression on a face accentuated by a sharp nose, and a mouth perpetually turned down at the corners as if he detected a foul odor in the air no one else was aware of.

  “He’s one of those aides who wears the senator’s mantle like we wear our stars and novas, Praddy. Life’s full of them. I checked his service record. He was a finance officer in the Holloway army. Never rose above the rank of light colonel.” Aguinaldo shrugged. “Now he’s got a blank check to wipe his feet on us. But he’s dangerous because he does know something about the military, enough to cause trouble. Keep your eye on him at the briefing tomorrow.” Aguinaldo had set up a commanders’ briefing for the next morning where the senators would be given a full orientation on what TF Aguinaldo had accomplished and what the plan was for engaging the Skinks on Haulover. Then they would be taken around to visit the various troop units, talk to the personnel there, ask questions, dig into everything. And then, hopefully, go home.

  “I wish Oceanside were up and running again,” Cumberland said. “Then we could plant them there and they’d be out of our hair. Let them luxuriate on the beaches instead of bothering us.”

  “Yeah, if luck were with us, Praddy, maybe a tsunami would come in again and wash them all out to sea. Damn, did I actually say that?” Aguinaldo laughed.

  “I guess we’re fortunate old Haggel Kutmoi isn’t out on this junket,” Cumberland said. He reached into a cargo pocket and took out two cigars, which he clipped expertly. Aguinaldo took one and they lit up.

  The mess personnel had been dismissed, since the two officers were dining alone that night, so Aguinaldo got up from the table and opened a cabinet. He took out a full bottle of Old Snort. “You know Colonel Raggers, Seventh MPs? He brought me this bottle of bourbon, best damned stuff I’ve ever tasted. They distill it back on Ravenette. They’re famous for it. Since it’s only you and me, Praddy, let’s crack it over these cigars. We can afford to live dangerously for one night.”

  They sipped and smoked for a while. “Yeah, Kutmoi. You’re right, we’re lucky that sleazeball isn’t along. Just ask Alistair Cazombi about that sack of shit. We’re lucky he’s running for president. But Praddy, if he wins…”

  “I know.” Cumberland blew a smoke ring. “Even money is saying he does.”

  “More than even, I hear.” Aguinaldo leaned back and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “If the Old Girl loses the election we lose this war against the Skinks, this campaign, anyway. And then things will go disastrously wrong for humanity, until, in its own good time, mankind finally catches on, as it always does. So in the long run this senatorial junket is a fart in a whirlwind. Goddamned politicians,” he said with feeling.

  “But will they, Anders?”

  “What?”

  “Humanity. Catch on.”

  Aguinaldo finished his drink, poured some into Cumberland’s glass, and refilled his own. He toasted Cumberland and sipped. “That, my friend, is the question.”

  The briefing for the senators, although conducted in the most professional military style, was a disaster—for the senators, that is. That was mainly because the auditorium where it was conducted was a hotbox. All the windows were open to admit even the slightest breeze. Flying insectlike creatures sizzled loudly in the protective screens over the windows, often distracting the senators and their staffers as they tried to concentrate on what the briefers were telling them.

  Things were not made any easier for the senators by the briefers themselves, who had been told to concentrate on the most complicated aspects of their training and logistical preparations for combat on Haulover. Worst in this regard was the G4’s presentation, which displayed an endless parade of charts and graphs, rows of figures on ammunition rates, short and long tons of supplies, replacement parts, all the sinews of war, vital statistics for commanders to know, but deadly boring stuff for the legislators slowly dehydrating in their seats.

  The visitors and their retinue wilted visibly in the heat and humidity, that is, all but Sneedly Grimmer, who sat primly attentive throughout, whispering comments into Senator Query’s ear. The senator was then expected to stand up and question the briefing officers, but after an hour he just sat there, virtually comatose in the heat, unable to respond. Smedley-Kuso couldn’t help dozing. She had charged one of her young female aides to poke her in the ribs if she began nodding off. The military personnel in the huge auditorium found it difficult to suppress snickers as they watched the large woman’s head bobbling on her fleshy shoulders, trying to look as if she were paying attention to what was being said.

  But the military people, acclimated to Arsenault’s tropical climate, were fresh, full of energy, confident, professional.

  The very first briefer, a Colonel Hiram Brisque, a former instructor at the Confederation General Staff College on Arsenault, was anything but brisk. He was the chief planner in the Operations Section of Task Force Aguinaldo headquarters, and he’d been personally selected by General Aguinaldo to conduct the overview portion of the briefing. That was not just because he was a brilliant strategist but mainly because he was well-known for his droning lectures, which tended to put his students to sleep. He stood there, twenty kilos lighter than before he’d been assigned to the task force, his uniform hanging limply about his frame, waving his pointer at the vid charts like a saber. Regardless of how his words were received by his slowly slumping audience, Colonel Brisque was enjoying himself enormously.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the doctrine upon which Task Force Aguinaldo is basing its Haulover campaign derives from the classic treatise written by the Prussian general Carl Maria von Clausewitz, who lived from 1780 to 1831. It is called Vom Kriege, or On War.

  “The basic Clausewitzian principle we used in drawing up our war plan was that of economy of force, the principle of employing all available combat power in the most effective way possible, in an attempt to allocate a minimum of essential combat force to any secondary or ancillary efforts. Economy of force, then, is the judicious employment and distribution of forces toward the primary objective of the conflict. No part of a force should ever be le
ft without purpose. The allocation of available combat power to such tasks as limited attacks, defense, delays, deception, or even retrograde operations is measured in order to achieve mass at decisive points elsewhere on the battlefield. In von Clausewitz’s own words, ‘Every unnecessary expenditure of time, every unnecessary detour, is a waste of power, and therefore contrary to the principles of strategy.’

  “I trust you will find the following charts and graphs of particular interest and I direct your attention to this one, which demonstrates the ratio of available maneuver elements plus aggregate firepower of those elements that can be brought against the estimated enemy forces in the area of operations in the terrain to be expected on Haulover. Now, you will see that comparing this chart with the next one…”

  The briefing went steadily downhill after that point. Much later that day, when he’d managed to pull General Aguinaldo aside for a moment, Senator Query asked, “General, for my constituents who don’t understand military jargon, just what is your objective in this campaign? In plain Standard English?”

  “Senator,” Aguinaldo replied, “in ‘plain Standard English’ it is to find ’em, fix ’em, and fuck ’em.”

  “Um, General, ah, maybe that’s a bit too plain?” Still, Query couldn’t suppress a slight grin.

  “Okay, Senator, we’re going to squash the Skinks into a little spot on the floor and then wash them down the drain. You can announce that on the six o’clock news and everyone’ll know exactly what we’re going to do when we get all our forces deployed against these Skinks.”

  “But General, has anyone tried to contact these aliens, find out what they want, what motivates them? Negotiate with them? Could we perhaps coexist? I mean, from their first appearance in Human Space, their presence was kept secret from everyone, and all we’ve ever done is fight them. Chang-Sturdevant never got the backing of either the Congress or the voters to go to war with these creatures. She built no consensus on this matter. No alternatives to war with them have ever been tried, have they?”

  Aguinaldo regarded Senator Query silently for a moment. “Senator, I was not consulted on the policy of keeping the existence of the Skinks a secret from you or the citizens of this Confederation. But I think the President got her ‘consensus’ when she announced the threat, laid everything out in public in her speech. I am convinced, sir, and so shall you be when you talk to men who’ve seen the Skinks up close and personal, that killing is their way of negotiating and that no, we cannot coexist with them.”

  Sneedly Grimmer perked up when Colonel Rene Raggel of the Seventh Military Police Battalion gave his presentation. Now here was something any politician could understand: military-civil relations. But by that time Senator Query was so far gone in REM sleep that Grimmer decided he’d reserve his comments for later, when his boss had had a chance to cool off and could pay attention. He made a note to talk to Raggel when they visited the units, which was scheduled for the afternoon. Meanwhile, as one briefer after the other droned on and on, Grimmer looked up Raggel’s biography on his reader. All the visitors had been given these bios on the task force commanders as a courtesy and now Grimmer discovered how useful they could be. “Traitor!” he whispered into Query’s ear. “The man’s a traitor.”

  The three members of the Seventh MP Battalion about to receive their awards stood at attention before the senators and their retinue. Colonel Raggel had drawn up the entire battalion for the ceremony. Raggel turned to General Aguinaldo. “Sir, I’d like to request that Senator Smedley-Kuso come with me and do the honors. The men would appreciate it very much if a Confederation senator pinned on their decorations.”

  “Sure, Colonel, they’re your men. Senator, it’s a great honor to be asked to assist in the awards ceremony. Are you up to it?”

  “Oh, General!” Olivia Smedley-Kuso perked up at these words, the fatigue of the long day disappearing instantly. One thing that revived her spirits more even than having her toes massaged was a photo opportunity. “Did they win them fighting anyone?”

  “No, Senator,” Colonel Raggel answered. “These are commendations for meritorious achievement, for the superb work they’ve done in getting the battalion ready for deployment to the theater of war. But they’re important recognition of jobs well done and they’ll mean a lot to these men.”

  “Well, yes,” she cooed. “I’m honored!”

  Sergeant Major Steiner called the battalion to attention. The battalion adjutant handed the medal boxes and award certificates to Colonel Raggel and then announced, “Attention to orders!” As the pair stood before each man the adjutant read the award certificate and Colonel Raggel handed Senator Smedley-Kuso the medal, which she awkwardly pinned on the flap of the man’s tunic pocket. The first one was rather difficult for her, with her large, sweaty fingers, but by the second man she was getting the hang of it. Senator Smedley-Kuso, pinning medals on heroes! That was really going to look good to the voters back on Wilkins’s World!

  The third man turned into a disaster. Really enthusiastic now, Smedley-Kuso thrust the pin on the back of the medal so hard into the man’s pocket flap that it went all the way through and stabbed him in the chest.

  “Goddammit!” he shouted.

  “Colonel! Did you hear what that man just said?” Senator Olivia Kancho Smedley-Kuso exclaimed, horrified.

  “Oh, well, fuck’im if he doesn’t want the goddamned thing,” Raggel responded. He’d waited all his life for a moment like this.

  “So, Colonel, I see by your bio that you were an aide to General Davis Lyons during the late unpleasantness on Ravenette,” Sneedly Grimmer was saying. They’d just finished the disastrous awards ceremony and were sitting in the battalion mess for refreshments before leaving. They were drinking real, brewed coffee and eating cakes made from real flour and sugar, not the artificial stuff they’d been fed in Aguinaldo’s mess. At the sight and smell of real food, Senator Olivia Kancho Smedley-Kuso had recovered her composure and was chatting gaily with General Aguinaldo at a nearby table, her recent embarrassment evidently forgotten, for the moment anyway.

  “Uh, what was that, Colonel?” Raggel had been thinking about the awards ceremony. He was not at all worried that his offhand remark would be held against him, but he was really ashamed of himself for having embarrassed the soldier involved, even though the man, along with everyone within hearing, had burst out laughing.

  “I said, I see where you were an aide to the traitor, General Davis Lyons.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” Grimmer’s voice had taken on a hard edge now.

  “General Lyons did his duty, as any soldier would. He was against the secession vote. And I might remind you, Grimmer, that General Cazombi, who is now the Chairman of the Combined Chiefs, recognized that fact when he signed the surrender agreement with General Lyons.”

  “Well, that was a very liberal set of terms. There are those who disagreed—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Grimmer.” Raggel held up a hand. “But the Congress upheld them and they were fair and honorable terms. Both General Lyons and I as well as every other man in our army swore loyalty oaths to the Confederation. And also let me remind you, sir, that we would never have gone to war against the Confederation if President Chang-Sturdevant’s government had been more honest with us about the Skink threat. And she has very bravely and very publicly acknowledged that fact. So I don’t want to hear any more of this shit from you or anyone else about Lyons being a ‘traitor.’” Raggel’s voice had risen, causing heads to turn in his direction. I’m really putting my foot into it today, he thought ruefully.

  “Well, it just is, I find it intriguing how a man like you can just switch your loyalty so smoothly, fighting us one day, fighting for us the next,” Grimmer said with a smirk.

  Raggel said nothing for a long moment, then answered, “I am a soldier, Mr. Grimmer, as it is rumored you yourself once were. My loyalty is to my commander but, just to reassure you, after we were defeated on Ravenette and s
urrendered, I signed a loyalty oath to the Constitution of the Confederation of Human Worlds, which I am now prepared to defend with my life if necessary.”

  “A piece of paper, Colonel.” Sneedly Grimmer sneered again.

  Colonel Raggel’s fist mashed Grimmer’s nose in a full centimeter. Two days later the delegation left. Two days after that the XVIII Corps received its deployment orders. Someone convinced Sneedly Grimmer not to press charges.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As soon as the Grandar Bay joined the still-assembling gator fleet in orbit around Haulover, Lieutenant General Patrice Carano, commander of the XVIII Corps, summoned Ensign Jak Daly of Fourth Force Reconnaissance Company. Daly was the commander of the two-squad Force Recon detachment that discovered the Skinks on Haulover. With Daly summoned, Carano contacted Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon on the Grandar Bay and asked the brigadier to join him on the Crowe-class amphibious battle cruiser CNSS Chapultepec—and to bring the commander of Thirty-fourth FIST’s reconnaissance squad.

  Carano first met privately with Sturgeon. The tone was cool, but cordial. The army general didn’t have anything against Marines, it was simply that Thirty-fourth FIST had been added to his corps after he left Arsenault and he knew neither the unit nor its commander. But considering that Thirty-fourth FIST had more contact with the Skinks than the rest of the Confederation military combined, he was glad to have those Marines with him.

  After establishing Thirty-fourth FIST’s position in the order of battle and Sturgeon’s place in the chain of command—a component element of the corps and reporting directly to the corps CG respectively—Carano called Ensign Daly and Staff Sergeant Wu into his office. Daly’s Force Recon detachment of eight Marines had suffered one dead and two too severely injured for fleet sick bays to deal with, so the badly wounded were still in stasis bags until they could reach a navy hospital. That left Daly with five Marines in his command, and three of them had been wounded in the actions with the Skinks. Carano had high regard for Force Recon, but he didn’t think five, plus their commander, was enough to provide the eyes-on-the-ground he needed. That was why he wanted Sturgeon to bring the commander of his FIST recon squad; he intended to join the two units together under Daly’s command, with Wu as his assistant, as XVIII Corps’s primary ground reconnaissance element. He told them so. Daly seemed not fully comfortable with having FIST-level recon Marines attached to him but didn’t object. Staff Sergeant Wu said he looked forward to working under Force Recon. Carano sent the two to his G3 to get the details of what they were to do when they went planetside.