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«What if we recall Ninth Corps?» croaked the President, looking up at the map for the first time in nearly an hour. His eyes burned. He had spent twenty years trying to get into this chair. It had cost him most of a stomach, a marriage and his children. And one mistake was all it took.
The general shook his head in resignation. «Too late.» He looked down at the briefing papers. The critical information on maintenance was damning. «The Posleen can move faster than those units.»
«Tactical mobility is one of the American Army's strong suits,» said the secretary, his tone resounding with surety.
«It is when you have well-trained, experienced units,» said the High Commander, raised back into fury by the fatuousness of the remark. «It is not a strong suit when you have undertrained, inexperienced, unsure units. Patton's Third Army could have done it easily. Waffen SS? No problem. The Allied troops in Desert Storm? Fuck, yeah. Give an order, pull out, run to the next position, be it a mile or a hundred miles, reassemble. No problem, Can Do.
«Here we have troops that have only had a filled chain of command for five months. Units that were rioting three months ago. Units that are a year behind on scheduled maintenance, almost two years behind on training. Units where half the vehicles break down in the first fifteen miles. Units that will have a hard time holding fixed positions, much less maneuvering.
«No, sir,» he continued, looking the President square in the eye. «The best we can hope is that Ninth Corps does more damage to the enemy than Tenth did, before the bastards pull them down.»
«And Richmond?» asked the secretary of defense.
«Well, sir,» said the general, «if we could only get them to turn around and attack Twelfth Corps.»
* * *
«How's it coming?» asked General Keeton.
John Keene spun around in his swivel chair and stared at the commander with a blank, distant expression for a moment. Then he shook his head and focused on the reality of the moment.
«Sorry,» he said, ruefully, «I was elsewhere.»
«I could see that. How's it going?»
«Remarkably well. Good news: by the end of this battle, we'll hardly have to do a thing to prepare Richmond for the long-term projects.» That was good for a weary chuckle.
«And what about being prepared for this particular set of visitors?»
«Well, the weakest points are still there. If they turn to the west, we are screwed and if they turn to the east we have great difficulty. But we think we have a good plan for centering their focus.»
«What's that?»
«Gold.»
«Gold?»
«Yep. The Posleen are notorious looters and they seem to be particularly interested in heavy metals and gems. It seems crazy, because you can get gold and diamonds much more easily from an asteroid belt than you can from a hostile city. But they really seem to crave it. Anyway, the Federal Reserve Bank here had a rather large supply of it. We . . . came up with a designation for Fourteenth Street as 'Gold Avenue' so to speak and have put what looks like some sort of ornamentation, made out of pure gold, on the street every fifty yards.»
«Oh, joy . . .»
«Yep. So, there will be a line of ornaments, on little stands, every fifty yards all the way up to the floodwall gates.»
«And that means that they'll follow the yellow brick road and want to keep following it.»
«Right. And just to add a little fun to it, we had a choice of five different sizes, so the first twenty were small, the second twenty were larger, and so on. By the time the front rank gets to the wall and the word gets around among them, we hope they're in a frenzy. We had quite a bit left over, so as an added bonus we put out larger ornaments from time to time. But only along Fourteenth Street. If they use the logic . . .»
«They will really want to cross that bridge when they come to it.»
«Yes, sir. And if the word gets around, most of them should head for Schockoe Bottom.»
Something about the facile explanation started to bother the corps commander. The general looked a little questioning for a moment. «How did you get the ornaments made so quickly?»
«Well, there is quite a bit of industry in the area,» Keene temporized.
«Or perhaps I should be asking what kind of ornaments they are?» asked the general, his suspicions now fully aroused.
«Well, we didn't have much of a choice . . .»
«What are they, Keene?» asked General Keeton.
«Well, you ever been behind a tractor-trailer, and noticed how on some of them, on the mudflaps, there are these shiny silhouettes . . . ?»
* * *
Ersin watched as the private hammered in the last iron stake topped with a golden silhouette of two busty females in a reclined position and shook his head.
«Yah know, boss,» said Mueller, «somebody's bound to have a cow about this.»
* * *
«And the defenses at Libby Hill are as complete as was pla
«What about their data security?» asked the secretary of defense.
«There was a cyberpunk team in Richmond on an unrelated mission,» answered the High Commander. «They checked the Twelfth Corps's IVIS and FireTac systems. Both were infected by a virus that apparently noted the detection and performed an autodestruct.
«They're picking apart the remnants right now and scratching their heads like everyone else. But as far as NSA, the Cybers and CONARC's own Data Security department can determine, Twelfth Corps is fully mission capable, including all automated systems. On the other hand, they've also zeroed every weapon in the Corps on particular targets and are only awaiting the Posleen to open fire. They really don't need FireTac or IVIS.»
«So you're saying that this battle should go as pla
«I did not plan the previous engagement,» said the High Commander.
«No, General,» said the President. «I pla
The general shook his head again. «We can pull out some of the supply perso
«If . . . when, the Posleen break through the defenses, they'll be able to engage the support elements, including artillery and supply units, that they weren't able to assault at the Dale City defense. Casualty estimates on this battle are double or triple the Tenth Corps battle.»
«And there's nothing we can do?» asked the secretary, incredulously.
«First Army has committed all of the Tenth Corps units that are reasonably cohesive to reinforce Ninth along with Tenth's Corps and division artillery, which was mainly behind the Occoquan. He was sending the Eighth and Eleventh Corps in to reinforce them, but he was countermanded by CONARC.»
«Why?» demanded the secretary.
«If Ninth can hold with all six divisions, two corps of artillery, and fixed, prepared positions, we'll send them in to reinforce. If it can't, and I do not expect it to, it is futile to throw away another sixty thousand troops. Besides,» he concluded, «First Army is strung from here to Boston. We're parceling them along the Potomac at crossings. We might have to use them to extract the refugees.»
«What about the ACS battalion?» asked the President.
«They are on their way. They should be there about three hours after the battle is joined. At that point the plan is to send them around Lake Jackson and hit the Posleen in the flank.»