Gust Front

Mike had also caught some praise for his diving skills. His GalTech breath-pack was a major reason for that. The small, experimental system included a nitrox rebreather that extracted oxygen and nitrogen from water. The staging bottle was small but high-pressure so the system was good for several days. The depth on it was limited to one hundred twenty feet, but the tiny pack made for such limited drag that it was like diving without gear.

Mike was able to approach normally skittish hog-fish and groupers without disturbing them with bubbles. And if they spooked anyway, he was still usually able to make a kill; the fish had no time to learn that a compact body and giant fins meant incredible burst speeds. Then the blood, turned green by the light filtering of the water column, would flow backwards as the fish made a last desperate dash for safety.

He was even able to make a rare tuna kill on a young fish that was attracted by the strange seal-like creature in the water column. The thirty-pound yellow-fin made a fine contribution to the catch.

He had finally dragged Cally away from the dolphins for a day to go fishing. Floating along a weed patch she had hooked into a big bull dorado and practically been dragged out of the boat. Any lingering resentment at being taken from her cetacean friends was washed away as the rainbow-sparkling fish tail-walked across the wake of the drifting sailboat, taking the line out of the reel with a banshee's shriek.

The nights had been just as good as the days. Mike, Sharon and Cally spent most early evenings at the pub, eating part of the day's catch and discussing the news from the radio with Harry, Bob, Honest John and Karen. By eight o'clock, though, Cally was whipped. Most nights Mike ended up carrying her off to bed. Then the conversation on wide-ranging topics would either continue or Mike and Sharon would retreat to their own room and renew their acquaintance.

The last two evenings the news had been about the war. And it was mostly bad. The goodness mopping up on Diess was countervailed by the opening of the Irmansul campaign, where the Posleen had gained an immediate upper hand over the mostly Asian forces. The Chinese Third Army had suffered over one hundred thousand losses in the first week's fighting and the bets were on that the Darhel would call on European forces to help them out. While European and American forces had suffered horrendous losses at the hands of the Posleen on Barwhon and Diess their superior coordination often permitted them to avoid the massive casualties that were characteristic of Chinese and Southeast Asian forces.

During the discussions, Mike—and Cally, to everyone's amusement—pointed out that the best units were on Barwhon, not Earth. The Barwhon units had a high percentage of veterans and were well drilled in to the needs of battle against the alien centaurs. By comparison the units left «Earthside» were in lousy shape. Units stripped from France, Germany or the United States would be no better off at the outset than the Asian units.

The virtual destruction of the first Expeditionary Forces and the ongoing blindsided slaughter on Barwhon had stripped the NATO militaries of most of their trained forces. The rejuvenated officers and NCOs would, eventually, take up some of the slack of their loss. But the current forces were a rotten branch. Until the reforms that Horner and Taylor had instituted took effect the units that were «Stateside» might as well be back in basic training.

All of which was surprisingly hard to explain to the boat captain.

«Look,» said the slightly drunk captain, pugnaciously. «They're soldiers, right?»

«Sure, John,» O'Neal said, «but soldiering isn't just about shooting a gun. Most war is about getting the shooters and the backing for them to where the enemy is. Even the Posleen aren't everywhere. So getting the right forces to the right place is the problem.»

«What's so hard?» asked Harry. «They're right there,» he continued, pointing in the general direction of Florida Bay. «What's so hard about finding them?»

«Oh,» Mike said ruefully. «You'll find them. Or, usually, vice versa. But for regular forces to survive them you have to dig in. Do you understand that?»

«No,» said Harry. «But I'll accept it.»

Mike took a pull on a panatela and wondered how to explain. «Okay, here's the best explanation I can give. You're going to fight somebody. You've got a one-shot pistol. They turn up with fifty buddies armed with machine guns. What do you do?»

«Oh,» said Harry. He scratched his head for a second. «I guess you shoot the son of a bitch who called you there.»

«True,» agreed Mike. «But if you do it from behind a wall you might be able to reload and kill some more, right? Hell, you might be able to survive.»

«Okay,» agreed John, taking a pull on a lemon-dashed rum. «I'll buy that.»

«So, the way to fight is from prepared positions. It's a lot like World War I that way. But you've either gotta have enough men to man a huge front or you've gotta guess where the Posleen are coming. And this is realizing that they can drop out of the sky, anywhere, at any time.»

«Gooks used to have little antiaircraft batteries all over the damned place,» said Honest John with a belch. «Why don't we?» The tone was bitter.

Mike raised an eyebrow but answered the question. «Technology. The 'gooks' got antiaircraft batteries from the Russians. The Russians had scads of gear lying around and lots of production facilities. We're having to teach the Galactics not only what to build but how to mass-produce stuff. Even then what we're really doing is a sort of super cottage industry. So, we don't have many weapons that can hurt the landers.»

«So we have to hit them on the ground,» Cally interjected, suddenly popping up to snatch a conch fritter. «Until they give mom a real ship and we get some more Class Nine Grav Ca

«And you're saying if we hit 'em on the ground, we're screwed,» said Honest John. He gri

«And do what?» asked Mike, curious. Honest John had always been happy to talk about fishing or the sea and he had debated a few military subjects, but this was the first time he had evinced any real knowledge or background. It was like he had dropped a mask or thrown off a cloak and said «Ah, hah!»

«Ambush convoys? Destroy supply depots? Call in artillery strikes? Kidnap cadre?»

Mike shook his head. «There's a fairly robust long-range reco

«The way that the horses partition stuff, most of their good artillery targets end up being beyond artillery range. Which is why a couple of universities are working on longer-range artillery.» Mike shook his head again and puffed on the cigar. «And the Posleen don't care if a 'town' gets wiped out by a special op group. They don't pull forces back from the front to look for the group. They use local forces. So it is generally a net loss. Just ask the combined ops team that we sent to Barwhon before the expeditionary force.»

«So we just, what did you call it, 'hunker down and take our licks'?» asked Karen, softly.

«I'm afraid so,» said Sharon in reply. «The Fleet is building. I don't know if it could go faster; maybe it could, maybe it couldn't. Once we have a real fleet we'll be safe. But until then we have to fight them on the ground.»