Steel Gauntlet

by David Sherman

  “Then how’d he get so damned smart about military affairs?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant asked suddenly. She was beginning to dislike Admiral Donovan.

  “Well, ma’am, there’s a lot of similarity between duty on a military staff and work in a corporate staff. Look at how many retired flag officers go on to head up corporations, for instance. Besides that, St. Cyr is a genius of sorts. It is said he has based his life on three books: his politics on Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, his personal relationships on Shakespeare’s Richard III, and his military expertise on Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Leader. That’s probably oversimplifying it a bit, but the man is very well read and a natural, if totally ruthless, leader. There are many examples of men like him in history, ma’am, who took naturally to soldiering. Nathan Bedford Forrest and Oliver Cromwell are two such. As I mentioned earlier, St. Cyr admires Cromwell a lot. You know who they were, I presume?”

  “Yes, Admiral, I do,” President Chang-Sturdevant replied sarcastically. She was beginning to dislike the Admiral a lot. “I suppose like Forrest, his motto is ‘Get there first with the most,’ and he’s fashioned his forces on Cromwell’s New Model Army, prayer services and Puritan self-denial and all?”

  “Ahem...” Donovan’s face reddened. “Well, not quite, ma’am. Uh, here is another gentleman to watch,” he said, rushing on. The image of Clouse Stauffer replaced that of St. Cyr. “This is St. Cyr’s chief of staff.” Stauffer was a strikingly handsome man with dark hair, an aquiline nose, strong chin, and intelligent eyes. “His name is Clouse Stauffer. He started out as St. Cyr’s administrative officer when St. Cyr was chief of a research project at a company called Vulcan Enterprises, before Tubalcain bought them out. That was forty years ago. Nobody knows St. Cyr better than this man. We suspect he played a significant role in St. Cyr’s military preparations and will continue to do so once the invasion is under way.”

  “If there is an invasion, Admiral. First I have to get the Confederation Congress to agree we need to invade. I’m going to need the support of all you gentlemen in that effort, and believe me, it’s not going to be easy.” Madame Chang-Sturdevant signed Admiral Donovan to continue with his briefing.

  “Madame President, what you must know about St. Cyr is that for forty years he has slowly and meticulously built up a loyal following among Tubalcain’s employees. He showed promise early in his career, and everyone expected that sooner or later he would rise to a position of great influence and power in the company’s affairs. They were content to wait for that day, when he would reward their loyalty. You know that among the people of Diamunde company loyalty is probably stronger even than family relationships. They have never heard of representative government there and wouldn’t want it if they had. The companies in turn take very good care of their people, but the bottom line on Diamunde has always been profits. Human considerations have always come second to corporate survival. And everybody there accepts that.”

  “What is your plan for invasion?” she asked.

  “We will work out the details once the Congress gives you the go-ahead, ma’am,” Admiral Perry answered. “But the Marines will go in first in divisional strength and secure a beachhead. They will be reinforced by the army. From there they’ll spread out and engage St. Cyr’s forces.”

  “We’ll get ‘em there on time,” Admiral Jaime “Spider” Webb, Chief of Naval Operations, promised. A short, slight man with steely blue eyes and curly hair, Admiral Webb was known for his incisive wit and his ability to make quick and correct decisions. When he retired, which was expected to happen soon, he would be sorely missed.

  “What about these tanks?” Berentus asked

  “He calls them ‘Toyful Panthers,’ ” Benteen said dully.

  “Uh, that’s ‘Teufelpanzers,’ ” Donovan corrected Benteen. “I believe it’s Old High German for ‘devil tank.’ ”

  “Armaments? Capabilities?” Chang-Sturdevant asked.

  “We are not too sure, ma’am, aside from what Admiral Donovan has already mentioned,” Admiral Perry responded. “We believe St. Cyr has at least enough tanks to equip two divisions, supported by infantry. We guess their organization and tactics are based on those of the German Army during World War Two, since St. Cyr admires them so much. But General Benteen is the only person we have who’s seen them in action and, uh,” he nodded at the defeated general, “he had other things on his mind at the time besides, um, studying nomenclature.” This was meant as a bit of levity, but neither Benteen nor Chang-Sturdevant took it that way.

  “How many tanks would that be?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant answered.

  “Two thousand,” General Benteen answered. “I did manage to keep count,” he said, looking directly at Admiral Perry. “There are fifteen tanks to a platoon in St. Cyr’s army. I found that out the hard way, up very close. Since there are three platoons to a company, three companies to a battalion, three battalions to a regiment, three regiments to a division, that makes one thousand, give or take a few, for each division.”

  Chang-Sturdevant began to experience a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Admiral, do we have anything that can stop these things?”

  “Madame President, we do,” answered a heavyset man with closely cropped hair who’d remained silent up until now. The speaker was Commandant Kinsky “Kickass” Butler, Confederation Marine Corps. Commandant Kinsky was famous for his terseness. “It’s called the Straight Arrow, Madame.”

  Madame Chang-Sturdevant looked questioningly at Admiral Perry and turned to Minister Berentus. He shrugged.

  “Madame President, the Straight Arrow is old technology that was developed specifically to stop heavily armored vehicles,” Admiral Donovan said. “It’s a rocket-propelled explosive charge that will penetrate armor.”

  “How old is this technology, Admiral?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant asked suspiciously.

  Admiral Donovan hesitated. “It was developed, um....well, about three hundred years ago, ma’am.”

  “Three hundred...” Madame Chang-Sturdevant gasped.

  “Well, there was no need of them, so they were scrapped two hundred or so years ago, but now that this St. Cyr has resurrected, as it were, armored fighting vehicles, well, the army found some money in its budget to build some prototypes, and we’re putting them back into production immediately, Madame.” Admiral Perry added brightly, “Our next budget submission will have a line item for the continued production of these weapons.” A pregnant silence descended upon the room. “Uh, we’ll need them now, you see, in case somebody else gets the idea to—” Madame Chang-Sturdevant’s icy stare froze him into silence.

  The silence became embarrassing as Chang-Sturdevant continued staring in outrage at her Combined Chiefs. “Gentlemen,” she began at last, and coughed. “Gentlemen,” she began again. She felt that she was losing control of herself quickly. “H-How many of these things do we have in our inventory?”

  “Well, we’re rushing them into production,” Admiral Perry answered. “Within a month we should have—”

  “Goddamnit! I asked, how many of these things do we have right now?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant shouted.

  “Well, Madame President, um, ah, we have, in our inventory, right now, that is,” Admiral Perry mumbled, “I believe, eleven.”

  Chapter 3

  He stood shivering in the rain-soaked field, not so much from the exhaustion of the last ten days’ march through the French countryside or the damp chill in the morning air, as from the sight of the French host, drawn up no more than 250 yards from where Henry’s army had finally taken up its battle lines. This was it. They would fight it out here at last, vastly outnumbered. His heart began to race, the chill and exhaustion forgotten.

  At a spoken command from Vinetar Fletcher, the twenty men under his command pounded their wooden stakes into the ground before them. The other archers in Henry’s army were doing the same. The field echoed hollowly with the sound of mallets pounding on wood, and then the chips flew everywhere as each man quic
kly sharpened the protruding end of his stake with the small hatchet he carried at his side. Hopefully, the stakes would impale the French cavalry.

  “Lay your arrows,” Fletcher commanded. Quickly, expertly, he disposed of his arrows, two sheaves of twenty-four chisel-nosed cloth-yard killers, each of which could penetrate one inch of solid oak at a hundred yards. He struck them points down into the ground within easy reach. Earlier, Sir Thomas Erpingham had given orders to the cenetars, each of whom commanded one hundred archers, to have the vinetars assure that each man’s bow was strung before the army marched into line.

  He stood behind his stake now, and notched an arrow onto his bowstring. Each man looked to Fletcher, who looked to the cenetar sitting on his horse. Evan Cooper, standing just to his right, said something, and when he looked over, Evan grinned ferociously, exposing the conspicuous gaps in his front teeth.

  Incongruously, Fletcher was reminded of the old wives’ tale that a gap-toothed person was sexually insatiable. Well, that was true enough in Evan’s case, but the grin was reassuring just now. He grinned back.

  “Draw!” Fletcher shouted, taking his command from the cenetar, who had also seen the signal to draw bows: huge bright flags that had just been raised from where King Henry and his entourage calmly sat on their warhorses. “Two hundred and fifty yards, lads!” Fletcher shouted. “Put ‘em in there!”

  The flags went down. “Loose arrows!” the vinetars screamed, and thousands of archers simultaneously let their arrows fly. The flags came up again. He bent and notched another arrow and drew his bow as the first volley arced one hundred feet into the air and then descended toward the French battle line. He lost sight of his own projectile almost instantly as it blended into the cloud that swarmed out to fall upon the waiting Frenchmen. The flags went down again. “Loose!” the vinetars screamed, and the second volley sped away from Henry’s archers with the sound of huge, whirring wings.

  Standing in the second row of his cenetar, he could see clearly and hear the arrows impacting upon the Frenchmen. The sound of thudding and spanging echoed across the wide field. Horses screamed in agony as the descending volleys found unprotected backs and flanks. Some men-at-arms were unseated as their mounts plunged madly, but protected by their steel helmets and body armor, few were disabled at that range. King Henry was hoping the volleys would goad them into charging, get them close enough so massed aimed volleys could knock them off.

  And then they did charge, one thousand armored horsemen rumbling across the field. The ground beneath Henry’s archers began to shake. As one, the archers stepped back six paces from the stakes to give themselves plenty of room to draw their bows once the cavalry was in range. Fletcher was very calm now, totally absorbed in what he was doing, oblivious to the destruction thundering down upon King Henry’s army.

  “Shoot straight, me lads!” Fletcher shouted. “Send the goddamned frogs to hell!”

  Professor Jere Benjamin, dean of the M’Jumba University History Department, was suddenly and painfully called back to the twenty-fifth century by the insistent shrilling of his communications console and a sharp burning sensation in his right thigh. “Yipe!” He brushed furiously at the glowing cigar ash that had burned still another hole in his trousers.

  “Jere?” Kevin Fike’s face appeared on the vidscreen. “Jere, are you there? Anything wrong?” Fike’s normally flushed face was even redder that morning, almost matching the color of his hair. When his face got that flushed, Benjamin knew that the president of M’Jumba University was dealing with something out of the ordinary.

  “Uh, okay, Kev,” Benjamin muttered, massaging the hot spot on his thigh. Carefully, he marked his place in the book he had been reading and closed its covers. “I’m fine. What’s up?”

  “Jere, something very important. Can you come over to my office right away?”

  Two men sat in President Fike’s office, one a white-haired, distinguished-looking gentleman in civilian clothes and the other a heavyset, grim-faced man in the dress red uniform of the Confederation Marine Corps assistant commandant. Professor Benjamin stood in the doorway transfixed with surprise. The civilian looked vaguely familiar.

  “Come in, Jere, do come in,” President Fike said, rising from behind his desk. “I’d like you to meet Secretary Berentus, whom you know by reputation, and General Boxer, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. General Boxer is also chief of R and D for the Marines. Please, come in and sit down.”

  Slowly, Benjamin crossed the room and shook hands with the Confederation Secretary of War and the Marine assistant commandant. “Evan Boxer,” the general said, shaking Benjamin’s hand. He smiled, revealing conspicuous gaps in his front teeth. Evan? For a moment Benjamin did not know when he was.

  “Something wrong, Professor?” Boxer asked.

  Benjamin just stood there for an awkward moment, staring at the officer. “Uh, no, no,” he replied quickly, recovering himself.

  “You look vaguely familiar, is all,” he explained, his face reddening. Then to himself: I’ve got to stop living in the past so much.

  “Cigars?” President Fike asked brightly, offering a humidor. The cigars were imported from Old Earth, where the tobacco was grown and then hand-rolled according to an ancient technique. The several cigars in the humidor cost President Fike about a week’s salary. “Fidels,” he said proudly as each man gratefully took one and bit off its end.

  Secretary Berentus produced a lighter and they all leaned toward him to catch the flame. As he took the light and drew on his cigar, Professor Benjamin self-consciously placed his elbow to cover the recent burn spot on his trousers. For several long moments the four were silent as they savored the delicious texture and aroma of the wonderfully expensive cigars.

  “Ahhh!” Boxer sighed. “A cigar is a cigar, but a Fidel is a smoke.” The others laughed comfortably, enjoying their own Fidels enormously. “Professor,” the Marine asked after several more moments, “what do you know about tank warfare?”

  “Ah! Yes! Ahem. Well,” Benjamin began, his nervousness gone—he was in his element. “As you know,” he continued, assuming his classroom manner, “the last major tank battle in history was fought in 2052 at Lake Mistassini, in Canada, on Old Earth, and involved the 1st and 7th Armored Divisions of the United States Army against the lightly armored forces of the Chibougamou League. The Americans fielded the M1D7 Abrams main battle tank and the Canadians destroyed almost all of them. It was the worst defeat of an armored force since the battle of Kursk, in Russia, in World War Two, where—”

  “The Canadians used the Straight Arrow antitank rocket, didn’t they, Professor?” Secretary Berentus interrupted.

  “Oh, yes. Indeed, sir. The Straight Arrow. The introduction of that weapon at Lake Mistassini virtually ended the use of tanks on the battlefield.” Benjamin leaned back in his chair and smiled confidently at the others. “Uh, why do you ask?”

  “Professor,” General Boxer said, ignoring the question, “I understand you have a complete set of the technical manuals for the Straight Arrow.”

  “Yessir,” Benjamin answered proudly. “They’re all original twenty-first-century editions. I also have the U.S. Army field manuals and training manuals for the entire weapons system, the launcher, the projectile, everything. Why, I even have ballistic tables—”

  “Could you fire one of those things?” the Marine asked.

  “Oh, yes, I believe I could!” Benjamin answered. The other three men looked at one another. “Uh, why do you ask?” Benjamin asked, repeating the question.

  The Secretary of War looked at Boxer, who leaned forward in his chair. “Professor, after Mistassini, we kept the Straight Arrow in our inventory for over a hundred years, just in case somebody decided to use heavy armor somewhere again. Eventually the council”—he made an apologetic gesture toward Secretary Berentus—“decided their maintenance was too expensive, considering the unlikely event we’d really need them again, so they were all destroyed two hundred years ago. Now we are p
lanning to build as many of them as quickly as we can. We suddenly need a lot of them. We managed to locate eleven in museums, and our weapons technicians are fabricating exact replicas right now. Your technical manuals would be invaluable to us. We could just ask for a loan and I’m sure you’d give them to us. But nobody alive knows how to fire the damned things properly or how to use them tactically against heavy—really heavy—armor. Except you. We hope.”

  “Jere,” President Fike said, “they were very impressed with your book, The Employment of Armor in Land Warfare in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Secretary Berentus has requested the loan of your services for a while. I have agreed. There will be some travel involved. Can you hand over your department to Dr. Toppings?”

  “Trish? Yes, yes, I believe she can handle things. How long would you need me?” He looked at Secretary Berentus, who nodded at the assistant commandant.

  “Oh, two, three months, maybe,” Boxer said. “We’ll need you to help train our men in their use and then oversee the weapons’ deployment in the, uh, active theater. We plan to gather on Arsenault a select group of officers and NCOs from the strike teams that’ll be making the initial assault landing. Arsenault’s the Confederation Armed Forces’ training world. You and a task force of technicians will train them there in the use of the Straight Arrow, and you, Professor, will teach them what you know about armored warfare tactics.”

  “Somebody’s using tanks?” Benjamin asked, as if the thought had only just struck him. It had. “Who? Where? It’s unbelievable!”

  “Somebody is, Professor, but I can’t tell you who or where just now,” Boxer replied. “We need you to help train our men. And, Professor? Every word of this conversation is classified top secret. I’m sure you understand.”

  Benjamin looked bewildered. “But why me, gentlemen? I’m not the only expert in this field. Why, Dr. Post over at the University of Nammuoi is fully as qualified as me to—”