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"Well, the actual incidence of why she was dumped wasn't that high," Mueller pointed out.
"Why was I 'dumped'?" the captain said carefully.
"You'd been raped," Mosovich said tightly. "Then they took away your sniper rifle and dumped you with an AIW and a single magazine."
"Oh," Elgars said. "That's . . . a
"So, you're saying that they don't want me in the Ground Forces because I might get raped in a retreat?" Wendy said angrily. "Then they shouldn't ought to let their damned soldiers in the Sub-Urbs!"
"Am I to take it that's why you were so uncomfortable coming to the surface with us?" Mueller said. "In that case, I'm sorry I asked. And if you'll give me a name and unit I'll take care of it."
"I was just giving testimony," Wendy said. She stopped at the top of the stairs blinking her eyes against the light and looked down at the town.
Franklin had been a small, somewhat picturesque city nestled in lightly inhabited hills before the war. Its main industry was supporting the local farmers and retirees who had moved up from Florida to get away from the crime.
With the change to a war footing, it became a vital linchpin in the southern Appalachian defenses. Units from just south of Asheville to Ellijay depended upon it for supply and administration.
The city was now overrun by soldiers and their encampments stretched up the hills on either side of it. The small strip mall that the entrance overlooked had been taken over by pawnbrokers and T-shirt shops with the only sign of "normal" presence being a dry cleaner.
She looked down over the bustle and shrugged. "When . . . when the Urb was first set up anyone could come and go at any time. That was . . . good at first. The corps did a lot of good in the Urb. And . . . there was a lot of dating. Most of the corps was male and most of the Urb is female so . . . things naturally happened. Then . . . the . . . the attitude sort of changed."
"A lot of the girls in the Urb were . . . lonely," Shari said. "They would take up with the soldiers and some of the soldiers practically moved into the Urb. A lot of what you could call 'black market' transfers went on; you used to be able to find coffee even. But then things started getting out of hand. The security force wasn't large enough, or effective enough, to keep the soldiers under control and they had an authority dispute with the corps MPs, who were numerous enough and quite ready to crack heads."
"We ended up having a . . ." Wendy shrugged her shoulders and shuddered. "Well, one of the officers that was involved in the investigation referred to it as a 'sack' during a long weekend. Something like a riot with a lot of rapes. I made it to the range and Dave and I sort of stood off the couple of groups that came around us."
"I had a . . . well, a group of . . . boys really that were like kids I was taking care of," Shari noted. "A couple of them were there when the riots started. I was okay."
"Others weren't," Wendy said darkly. "So we don't like the corps in the Urb. Anyway, the Urb was put off-limits to military perso
"Unless they had orders," Mueller pointed out.
"Unless they had orders to go there," Wendy agreed. "And now they stay up here and we stay down there and any girls who want to go . . ."
"Ply a trade?" Mosovich asked. "I get the point. But you don't have to worry about human threats either."
"Oh, I'm not worried," Wendy said, stroking her rusted rifle. "It might be a bit screwed up, but it will do for a club if it comes to that . . ."
CHAPTER 16
Ground Force Headquarters, Ft. Knox, KY, United States, Sol III
1453 EDT Thursday September 24, 2009 ad
General Horner read the debrief of the recon team with a blank expression. His intelligence section was of two minds about it; Mosovich had an excellent reputation, but nobody had ever seen flying tanks before.
Horner didn't have a problem in the world with the information. It was bad. That was normal.
He sighed and pulled up a graph that he knew he looked at too much. It was his own AID's estimate, based upon all available information, of . . . relative combat strength in the United States. It took into account that the casualty ratio of humans to Posleen tended to be about one thousand to one, but it also took into account the dwindling supplies of soldiers and Posleen birthrates. What it said was that sometime in the next twelve months, when the current crop of Posleen nestlings reached maturity and were given their weapons, there would be enough Posleen to swamp every major pass in the Appalachians. And it wouldn't even take smart Posleen.
Add in smart Posleen and things just went right down the old tubes.
The report from Georgia, though, was very troubling. He knew that Rabun was considered one of the less well maintained defenses, mostly because it had hardly been hit. There was a defense specialist down there, the name hovered on the edge of his recollection, but they needed more than that.
And Bernard was there. That would give the Posleen all the advantage they needed.
What to do, what to do . . .
First he typed in orders for the Ten Thousand to prepare for movement. They could stay in place, they needed the break, but they went to a four hour recall and were ordered to begin packing all their gear for a move. Cutprice was probably already packed, but it never hurt to be sure. He considered doing the same for the ACS, but if he did O'Neal would probably put everybody in suits and head for . . . Oh . . . shit.
He looked at the map again and shook his head. That put a twist in the whole plan. He really needed to not mention the situation to O'Neal, who really needed a few more days rest. Getting the battalion south fast, though, would be tough. Or not.
He checked the inventories and they had a sufficiency of Banshee stealth shuttles in inventory. The shuttles had been ordered when it appeared the Galactic largesse was unending. In twenty-twenty hindsight he wished they had the same relative value of suits, but they had to play with the hand they were dealt. If it really dropped in the pot in Georgia he could fly O'Neal and the Black Tyrone down by shuttle. Most of them were out west, but he should have some warning before it dropped in the pot.
That was the extent of the forces he had immediately available. He would have his staff start looking at what else was available to reinforce in the Gap. But then he noted that it only had one SheVa. Moving one of those was not a short term operation.
He tapped the controls and noted that there was a SheVa in movement to Chattanooga.
Not any more.
* * *
Mosovich looked at the faзade of the building. The business had once been a family-owned barbecue restaurant and Mosovich had vaguely recalled it from years before when he visited the area. The local VFW had been next door.
Now it was a bar designed to separate soldiers from their money in the shortest possible time.
The front deck was packed with soldiers, most of them lightly armed and heavily drunk. Squeezed into spaces in between were the waitresses and other working girls.
He winced as a soldier stumbled out the main door. The unshaven sergeant was supported by a lightly clad female who couldn't have been over the age of consent. The sergeant squinted at the sunlight, grabbed the girl by a tit and stumbled off down the street, weaving on and off of the sidewalk towards a nearby motel.
"Not," he said.
"Not," Wendy agreed as she shivered in the wind. "Five gets you ten he gets rolled. Any other bright ideas?"
"Just one," Mosovich said, looking up at the sun. They had managed to pack the whole group into the appropriated Humvee by much sitting on laps and packing some of the children in the bed. But traveling much further would be problematic. And the afternoon was upon them; it was October and most of the kids were underdressed for nighttime fall temperatures. "How you doing, Captain?"