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«Pardon me,» he continued, turning to the print journalists and photographers, «but you guys come last.» That got a laugh.
«So, shall we start?» asked Bob.
«What, we haven't already?» Jack said with another cold smile.
«Well . . .» Argent temporized. He hadn't dealt much with the Continental Army commander but he recognized the smile as a bad sign.
«Hasn't your cameraman been filming the whole thing?» asked Horner, shortly. «And unless I'm an idiot, everybody is taking notes.»
«Okay,» admitted Argent. «In that case: General Horner, it has been an hour since the Posleen came out of hyperspace. What's happening?» The cameraman lifted the minicam to his shoulder to get a steadier shot.
«There've been some space battles between the fighter patrols and the converted frigates that were on station, but this incursion has been outside all the expected parameters,» responded Horner formally. «The Posleen are here in greater strength than we anticipated, they are more bunched than we were expecting not only on the basis of Galactic reports but on the basis of our own experience on Barwhon and Diess. Last but not least, they came out unusually close to the Earth; dangerously close in fact.
«Because of all of this the Fleet has been unable to engage them with any sort of strength. They are coming down more or less untouched, while we have lost quite a few of the fighters and frigates that engaged them. I have to say this, those Fleet people did a hell of a job given the disparity of the forces they faced. Their efforts were just outstanding.»
«Can we get a look at some video?» asked one of the radio personalities.
«We'll get some of that in from the Operations center in a moment. Having said the other, about total access, I want you to understand that we have a job to do and we need to do it to the best of our ability. Understand?»
«Yes,» replied the reporters, wondering when the hammer was going to fall.
«I don't have time to draw any of my people off their duties; so we're going to go into the CIC to meet the players. They are all very busy trying to save our country, so be polite. This is a very quiet, serene place where people concentrate very hard: no disruptions. Think of it like a war library. No shouts for a quote, no flash photography, no camera lights.» He fixed them with a blue, basilisk stare until all of them had nodded in compliance. «If any of you do any of those things in CIC, I'll have you thrown out of this building by a suit of combat armor. He will have orders to shot-put you into the Potomac.» The river was nearly a mile away. The reporters were fairly sure it was hyperbole, but looking at the grim-faced, cold-eyed general, they were not absolutely sure.
«After the CIC, I'll hook you up with a couple of our technical people who will try to integrate our systems with yours. I want you guys to know where the landings are going to be as fast as I do. But no disruptions. The American people ca
«Clear,» answered the sobered journalists. Never had a situation like this occurred, where the people they were interviewing were in charge of saving not only their lives, but the lives of their families and loved ones. In real time. Usually, rattling a subject or throwing an unanswerable question at them was the best way to get a really juicy quote. Those techniques suddenly seemed like a bad idea. Rattled would be bad. Argent looked around and saw the other reporters coming to the same sobering conclusion.
Horner and his aide led them down a short corridor and over to an MP-guarded door. On the far side was a small antechamber and beyond a large, darkened room filled with a mixture of Terran and Galactic technology. On the far side of the room was a giant Mercator projection showing a number of orbit lines in green, blue and red and five large ovals designating possible landing areas. The outside of the ovals, where they were discrete, was yellow and they shaded inward through orange to red. One was centered on the Atlantic, another on the Pacific, a third on Southeast Asia to India, one on Central Asia and one on Africa. The TV cameramen started filming, not sure if the screens would show well enough to broadcast. The quiet atmosphere reminded him of a surgery, everyone concentrating on their individual tasks for an overall good.
The possible areas for Posleen landings were still vast; the Atlantic oval spread from Chicago to Berlin. The Africa oval overlapped the Southeast Asia oval. The very edge of the Pacific oval overlapped the Southeast Asia oval near the Philippines. In all they nearly circumnavigated the northern hemisphere.
«Full house spread,» whispered a reporter from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
«This screen used to be covered with satellite tracks,» pointed out Lieutenant Colonel Tremont in a whisper. «The remaining military satellites and facilities are the green tracks, while the blue tracks are remaining commercial facilities.»
«Yeah,» whispered the CNN producer in return. «We're mainly going out on dedicated landlines to cable operators and on the Internet. Cell, pagers and phones are mostly down.»
«This screen is, obviously, not used for tactical operations,» Colonel Tremont explained. «But it is useful for getting an overall picture.»
«Colonel,» Argent asked quietly, putting on his reporter face, «is the loss of the satellites going to degrade the quality of your artillery fire and command and control? I understand that most development in those areas has concentrated on global positioning satellites.»
«It would, yes, except for the extraordinary work over the last three years of the United States Geological Survey Service. Using a mixture of military, civilian and volunteer perso
«What about targeting the enemy? Didn't that depend on the GPS as well?»
«Same thing, only backwards. The forward observer determines his distance and elevation to the nearest UTD and his distance and elevation to the target and sends the raw data to the targeting computers. It all can be done with a special laser range-finding system. The targeting computer crunches the numbers and assigns the fire to the appropriate guns. It's incredibly automatic.»
«Will it work?» asked the Journal Constitution reporter.
«Ah, well that is the question isn't it?»
«You said something about co
«Of course, let me introduce Major George Nix.» General Horner gestured for one of the hovering officers and the slight, bespectacled major hurried over from one of the displays.
«Major Nix came out of Space Command and is our tactical systems officer. The TacSO is the officer in charge of making sure all the systems integrate and are maintained, as opposed to the tactical actions officer, Colonel Ford. Colonel Ford—we call him the TacCO—is in charge of making the moment-to-moment tactical decisions.
«Major Nix, can you get these journalists a feeder screen and somehow hook their cameras up? I want to make sure that everyone in the United States has up-to-the-minute access to all the data we are generating.»
«Yes, sir, we anticipated this.» He turned to one of the video technicians. «Come with me.»
Nix led the tech out of the room, the reporters following and quietly making notes about the intense atmosphere in the room. He led them down the corridor and into a well-lit chamber where two specialists and a slightly overweight staff sergeant were arguing at a display.