EMPIRE: Intervention (EMPIRE SERIES Book 13)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “OK. That works. Now let’s go over the changes to the plan, and how the resistance will play into all this.”

  It was hours later when they broke for the night.

  Simulation and Coordination

  The next day, Kersey stayed in the hotel room, ostensibly reading a book while she fumed about the previous night’s marital tiff with Boardman. What she was actually doing was setting up the Julian operation in the Imperial Marines command simulator.

  In possession of her preliminary roster of forces, the payroll listing of the Security Ministry, and the numbers from the resistance leaders of how many men they would be able to field, Kersey was able to flesh out the size of all the forces involved.

  She also had weapons inventories for all the forces. Gulliver’s first sales order from Interstellar Arms & Munitions was the baseline for her own forces, and the security minister had also sent Gulliver their current inventory so he could plan the supplemental purchases. The resistance she assumed was unarmed at the moment. That would be corrected in Gulliver’s follow-on orders.

  To support his search for an appropriate dam site, the infrastructure department had provided Boardman with complete topographical maps of the city and its environs out to two hundred miles. As those maps had been made with Imperial software, they imported directly into her wargame simulation. Kersey imported the detailed topo maps, including all the geographic information system (GIS) data – roads, buildings, infrastructure, vegetation, soil type.

  When she had set it up, it was about as complete a wargame simulation as she had ever done. The simulation software gave her a ninety-two percent score on completeness of the data. What she was missing were things like the operational plans of the opposing force – things she was unlikely to get.

  Kersey put the simulation in motion and watched it play out. She made adjustments, put it in motion again, watched it play out.

  Throughout the afternoon, sitting quietly in the frowzy armchair of their hotel room, Kersey ran the simulation again and again. Her refinements got more and more subtle as the day wore on. This group here. That roadblock there. Run it again.

  Clean operations were the result of good planning.

  And clean operations were Brigadier General Ann Turley’s claim to fame.

  That night, once all three of the conspirators were in bed and logged into VR, Kersey showed Boardman and Gulliver the simulation.

  “Well, that went pretty well,” Gulliver said.

  “With that set of decisions, yes. The simulation randomizes the possible responses by the opposition commander. Watch when I run it again.”

  Kersey ran the simulation again, and the results weren’t the same. They still won, but it was messier. Much messier.

  “Can you run it with the worst possible scenarios?” Gulliver asked.

  “You mean, if the opposition commander makes all the decisions that are worst for us, even without complete knowledge of what’s happening?”

  “Yeah. Let’s say he makes all the right decisions by accident.”

  “Sure.”

  Kersey adjusted the simulation for worst-case opposition-force decisions, and ran it again.

  “Ouch. That hurts,” Gulliver said.

  “OK, so let’s walk through this one and see what we can do to head off various moves and limit the opposition commander’s choices,” Boardman said.

  They were working on the worst-case scenario when Gulliver had an idea.

  “Wait a minute. What if we could take out the officer corps of the opposition force? Just take their middle-level leadership out of the game.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Boardman asked.

  “Just do it for a second,” Gulliver said. “Take out these three rows of the officer corps on their side. Yeah, that’s it. Run that in worst-case mode.”

  Even in worst-case mode, the headless opposition forces were flailing from the very start. The friendlies cleaned up on them with minimal losses on either side. Most of the opposition forces outright surrendered.

  “Nice,” Kersey said. “But you still haven’t said how we manage that.”

  “OK. Here’s what we do.”

  Gulliver explained his idea, and Kersey and Boardman were astonished.

  “Why didn’t we think of something like that?” Kersey asked.

  “Yeah. That’s fuckin’ brilliant,” Boardman said.

  “Well, I’ve been dealing with the personnel and training issues, don’t forget,” Gulliver said. “So that’s where my head is at the moment.”

  During this period, Ann Turley was filing reports directly with Dieter Stauss. Stauss was also getting reports from the leader of his team on Verano, and he copied each of their reports to the other.

  Verano’s situation was similar to Julian’s, though there were differences. Juan Baptiste Elizondo had fostered a cult of personality around himself. His picture was everywhere in Verano, just about the only public art allowed. The ‘Savior of the People, Beloved By All’ was the slogan, in both English and Spanish. His social program, though, was drearily similar: equality for everyone – the equality of poverty – except for him, his minions, and his cronies.

  There were differences in the Stauss team on Verano, too. Jorge Vargas (Brigadier General, Imperial Marines, retired) had been on the general staff two years when he hit the twenty-five-year pension vesting. He had retired, hoping to live a more normal life with his wife. But the marriage that had survived the hardships of remote postings and long separations couldn’t endure the tranquility of retirement, and they had divorced within two years. That had been a year ago, and now, at age 50, Vargas, under the alias Hodei Barros, found himself in command of Stauss’s Verano operation.

  His senior non-com was Roberto Cabrera (Command Sergeant Major, Imperial Marines, retired), who worked as a heavy-project construction foreman for Projex, a Stauss Interstellar company that contracted major construction projects. The Verano colony’s capital of San Jacinto had been built near the Sierra Alta mountain chain, mostly for access to fresh water. The rich grazing lands on the other side of the mountains could only be reached by air currently, and a better road through an existing pass in the mountains would open up those pasturelands to development. Under the alias Humberto Noguera, Cabrera was working with the colony’s streets and highways department.

  The Section Six representative on the team was Morena Prieto, one of many aliases the Imperial agent had used over the years. On Verano, she was pretending to be Cabrera’s mistress. It didn’t hurt that they had natural chemistry, and that she was a sultry beauty who could play the fiery Latina to perfection. Her strategy was the opposite of Gulliver’s. Where he was colorless and unthreatening to the point of disappearing, she was so vibrant as to stand out in any crowd. No one ever suspected her of being an agent, because an agent wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves the way she did.

  Prieto had made contact with the local resistance earlier than Kersey had managed. Her cover of a mistress who wasn’t averse to romantic liaisons on the side had opened doors closed to Kersey’s mousy housewife cover. They had been behind on the operational planning, however, wrestling with the worst-case scenarios in the simulator to little effect.

  That all changed when they received Kersey’s latest report.

  Laying in bed, apparently asleep, the trio met up in VR.

  “So what do you think of the Julian team’s idea to decapitate state security?” Barros asked.

  “It’s brilliant,” Noguera said. “And when you add it to the simulation, even the worst-case scenario is positive. All the possible outcomes are good, from our point of view.”

  “I’m glad you two don’t have Not Invented Here syndrome,” Prieto said.

  “Not on operations planning,” Barros said. “That’s not how the Imperial Marines work. I’ll take any good ideas I can get, especially from Ann Turley.”

  “I didn’t know you knew her,” Prieto said.

  “Only by reputation,�
� Barros said. “And in an outfit as big as the Imperial Marines, that’s saying something.”

  “Yeah,” Noguera said. “There’s been a coupla books written about the job she did on the Groton Insurgency. Innovative. Effective. Quick.”

  “That’s what we want,” Barros said. “Innovative, effective, and quick. This will help a lot.”

  “It won’t be effective unless we time it right, on both planets,” Prieto said. “We need to make sure one doesn’t hear about the other before the hammer drops on them both.”

  “Some o’ that we can handle by taking out the QE system, I think,” Noguera said.

  “We can also coordinate timing by scheduling the deliveries properly,” Barros said. “I’ll mention it in my next report.”

  Kersey, Boardman, and Gulliver talked about Barros’s adaptation of Gulliver’s idea to their own plans for Verano that night when they met in VR.

  “So what do you think?” Kersey asked.

  “I think we better coordinate so both operations hit the same point at the same time,” Gulliver said.

  “That shit never works,” Boardman said.

  “Excuse me?” Gulliver asked.

  “I think what Lyle’s saying in his elegant way is that coordination of military operations across long distances is often difficult if not impossible,” Kersey said.

  “That’s what I said,” Boardman said.

  “Ah. So then what do we do?” Gulliver asked.

  “General Vargas’s report notes we can disrupt the QE system during the critical period, so we can limit off-planet contact during any discrepancy in the timing.”

  “Then how do we know when the operations have synched up if the QE system is down?” Gulliver asked.

  “Oh. My command vehicle will have an independent QE system tied into the Imperial network. I won’t have any problem being in touch with General Vargas.”

  “Yeah, the headquarters tank will be tied in,” Boardman said. “That could work.”

  “Headquarters tank?” Gulliver asked.

  “So-called,” Kersey said. “Command vehicle. Tracked vehicle, but without a main gun or impellers. That opens up lots of room for the command staff and the QE radio and all, but it can go wherever the rest of the column can go.”

  “Ah. Got it,” Gulliver said. “So we’ll have communications, we’ll just cut off communications for everyone else.”

  “Exactly,” Kersey said. “The communications gear you ordered for the Security Ministry has the ability to filter off-planet communications.”

  “Yeah. That’ll work,” Boardman said.

  He looked back and forth between Kersey and Gulliver.

  “I love it when a plan comes together.”

  Kersey nodded.

  “Indeed,” she said. “Now let’s work out the details so I can include them in my next report and General Vargas and I can close on a coordination and communications strategy.”

  “You could just VR to Vargas, couldn’t you?” Gulliver asked.

  “I could, but there’s two problems with that. One is that they aren’t in the same time zone, if you will. Julian and Verano are out of synch right now. Which is part of the problem with synching the ops. And they have the same secrecy and surveillance issues we have. Neither of us wants to let on to local security that we’re VRing on a regular basis.

  “The other issue is that verbal coordination isn’t as good as written coordination. People don’t remember exactly what was said, and little things can slip through the cracks. If Vargas and I hammer out a written coordination plan, however, it is much more likely to be carried out on both ends.”

  “Yeah. Verbal plans don’t work worth a shit,” Boardman said.

  “That’s what I said,” Kersey said.

  “I see,” Gulliver said. “Well, this is your savvy, Ms. Kersey. You would know much better than I.”

  Gulliver looked over the timeline, including the expected arrival time of the ordered equipment on Alexa.

  “Looks like I’d better get started setting up the training of the local security forces.

  Paul Gulliver was meeting with the security minister in his office in the government compound on Julian. Once again, Minister Land had sent his armored limousine to pick Gulliver up at the Capital Hotel.

  “Ah, Mr. Gulliver. Come in, come in,” Land said as he got up from behind his desk.

  “Good morning, Mr. Land. Thank you for meeting with me.”

  “Not at all. Please, have a seat.”

  Land waved to the sitting arrangement at the side of his desk in the big office.

  “Thank you, Minister Land.”

  Gulliver and Land sat in the big club chairs facing each other.

  “Given that you asked for this meeting, Mr. Gulliver, I’m hoping you have some news for me on our request.”

  “Indeed, sir. And good news at that.”

  “Excellent.”

  “You know, of course, that I put in for the small weapons you requested. These are not that unusual for police units, especially special-response units. The numbers are a little large given the size of the population on Julian, but I didn’t expect any pushback there, and I didn’t get any. That equipment is on the way.”

  “Good, good. Continue, Mr. Gulliver.”

  “Yes, Minister. What surprised me is that, though there was initially some pushback on the other items – especially the communications gear and the armored assault shuttles – those have now been approved as well.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you for making our case so effectively, Mr. Gulliver. And when can we expect shipments of these items?”

  “That also surprised me, Minister. Often there are production backlogs, or colony requests have to queue in behind Imperial requests, but this time there was inventory on hand. I’m told those units are already in shipment to Alexa, for transfer to a smaller freighter making the Julian run.”

  “That is unexpected. I was dreading some dreary long wait for availability.”

  “As was I, Minister. I was very pleasantly surprised.”

  “Well, it couldn’t come at a better time, Mr. Gulliver. We have heard back through our informants the resistance has obtained access to training materials on light infantry weapons, and is even now training. In simulation, of course.”

  “I’m afraid that was inevitable, Minister. I provided open access to the light infantry weapons training simulations to your security forces, working through your staff. But of course if you have informants within the resistance, I expect they have informants within the Security Ministry as well. I’m afraid the access pointer to that simulation leaked to the resistance through one of those channels.”

  “Ah. That must be it. Still, it’s disconcerting.”

  “But without the weapons themselves, it is nothing more than a VR game, Minister Land. It is your security forces who will have the weapons.”

  “Indeed. Very well. That handles that question then.”

  “It does raise another training question, though, Minister Land. The alacrity with which Stauss Interstellar has been able to ship the desired products has caught me somewhat unprepared. I need to set up the training your personnel will need to utilize these new systems. The drones, the communications equipment, the assault shuttles, all of that. And, the simulation training notwithstanding, the light infantry weapons will be much more useful with some live training as well. Now there will be training personnel coming out with the equipment. I specified that in the request. But the scheduling of your personnel into those training sessions falls to me.”

  “Work up a schedule with my staff once you have exact delivery dates, Mr. Gulliver. I’m sure they can assist you on that score.”

  “Very well, Minister Land. I did have one policy issue for you, however. Do you wish to train your management personnel first, followed by the lower-ranking personnel, or do you wish to provide the training the other way around, to the lower personnel first and then the management personnel?”

  �
�What do you recommend, Mr. Gulliver?”

  “I’ve seen it work either way, Minister, although training lower-ranking personnel first and management personnel later usually works best with upgrades to existing systems. For completely new systems, it usually works best to train the management personnel first. Once they see what’s involved with each piece of equipment, for example, they may wish to modify their staffing assignments to put people in the positions best suited to their existing skills.”

  “Yes. Yes, I can see that. Very well, Mr. Gulliver. Let’s train the management personnel first, and then the lower-ranking people. Inform my staff that’s how we’re going to proceed.”

  “Yes, Minister Land.”

  Pieces In Motion

  The Imperial Marines M15 main battle tank was the largest mobile platform the Marines had. In addition to the turret-mounted main gun, which could fire a variety of hypersonic rounds to a distance of ten miles, the M15 had body-mounted osmium impellers both front and rear. Both of those traversed independently of the turret, and were for anti-personnel and anti-vehicle use to fifteen hundred yards. The osmium impellers had sufficient elevation to fulfill a limited air cover role as well, and were devastating against even armored assault shuttles.

  The M15 was a large unit, for it contained sufficient fuel, ammunition, and food and water for its crew of six for extended deployments. ‘Bunking in’ for the crew of the M15 was even possible, though not practiced except in need. Despite its size, the M15 could at need attain speeds of a hundred miles an hour. Its economical cruise speed was fifty miles an hour, with a range of over five hundred miles. The range fell to two hundred miles at its maximum speed. Nuclear power, such as on Imperial Navy ships, had been rejected for the M15 due to both the size of the nuclear powerplant and the likelihood of radiation hazards on the battlefield.