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"Major O'Neal is requiring a cold LZ. Very well, let them land outside the Posleen area and assault down from Black Rock mountain. I mean, that's how an air assault is supposed to go; you don't land right on the objective for God's sake!"
"And we have to consider the overall effects, Mrs. President," the communications director cut in. "We have a redistricting battle going on nationwide; it's probably not a good idea to give the appearance of panic. If it appears that you're losing in the southeast, and it will if you authorize nuclear release, people will shift towards the other party. . . . And, besides, they're caught in the mountains; surely conventional forces can handle them there."
"Right," Horner snarled. "That's it. First of all, it wasn't a request, it was an order. And a valid one. You can try to parse that, but I guarantee you it falls under the letter of the treaty and the Darhel will well and truly cut your legs out from under you if you try to parse it any other way. That assumes that any of us are around to discuss it with them because if we don't stop this incursion we are all going to be HORSE CHOW.
"Furthermore, Major O'Neal is perfectly correct. There is no way to take the Gap without the Posleen being cleared out. And the only system that conceivably could do it would be using ICBM fire from the upper Midwest.
"I'm so glad that your communications director, with her degree in law from Stanford, is such a military expert! Perhaps she can tell me how I'm supposed to stop the Posleen, who are using airmobile tactics and pouring a hundred thousand troops an hour through the Gap? I have one, repeat, ONE division available to contain them and it will have to cover multiple exits from the zone. Furthermore, they appear to be pla
"There are times when the proper weapon to use is a nuke. You need to come to grips with that, Madame President. We need to use nukes, not want to use them, need to use them. We should have used them at Rochester and at second Roanoke; it would have considerably reduced the casualties that were inflicted on us. By not using them you probably caused me to lose a division of additional casualties. But now we have to use them; the choice is that or die. Welcome to the wall.
"This . . . politicalsqueamishness has to stop and it has to stop right now! We have one battalion of ACS left available and they are the only unit that can perform the mission and they will evaporate in a second if they don't have a big hole to drop into. And that means using nukes. I am not going to piss those ACS away. We will use nukes in the initial assault and we will be oncall with nuclear suppport until the Posleen are pushed back through the Gap. And if you have a problem with that, you can have my god damned stars rightNOW."
As the High Commander opened his mouth to respond hotly the President raised her hand.
"Is it really that bad?" she asked.
"Madame President," the High Commander said, "there is no need . . ."
"Stop," she said, holding up her hand again. "I asked the question of General Horner."
"Yes, ma'am," the general replied. "It's really that bad. After the Gap there are multiple routes open. Some of them, most of them, are pretty nasty, but there isn't much to block them with. It's . . . complicated, but I can't get enough forces to all the paths they will probably take to stop the . . . flow of them. There are too many exits from the Gap. They are able to turn towards the west and open up the 129 route and that will cascade forces onto Chattanooga. And they have enough . . . force-flow to also head for Knoxville and Asheville. I can't bottle up all of those forces with what's in the area; it's gotten drawn down to help all the other emergencies that have occurred. And now they're also starting a full court press up and down the Appalachians: There's just not enough forces to handle all of that and the forces in the Gap. I have to . . . bottle them up until I can get forces into the area to push them back.
"I have to stop the flow before enough get through to take Asheville or Chattanooga from behind; Madame President, there are three Sub-Urbs between the Gap and Asheville comprising fourteen million people total. And if Asheville falls we might as well all learn to speak Canadian."
"You can'tstop them with nukes," the High Commander argued. "There are too many Posleen. It's not physically possible to 'glaze the eastern seaboard' even if we could survive it politically or environmentally."
"I don't intend to," Horner answered coldly. "As you would have noted if you had listened. I intend to open up a hole and drop Mike O'Neal in it to plug it. I'd also like to open up their use at other key points."
"Hold on a moment, General Horner," the President said. "I'd like everyone to drop out of this circuit and Mrs. Norris and Ms. Shramm need to leave the room."
She waited as the others reluctantly left the circuit then turned back to the image of the distant general. "General Horner, the Chinese fired over two thousand nuclear weapons and poisoned the valley of the Yangtze for the next ten thousand years. You propose to do much the same to the Te
Horner opened his mouth and closed it then opened it again and sighed.
"First, Madame President, let me say that I appreciate you . . . explaining that. If you had done so before, however, I could have suggested some ways that we could have . . . adjusted that public perception. We could have used them in the 'fortress cities' in the plains, after telling the public that we were simply opening up, effectively and pardon my language, 'the whole can of whup-ass.' I think that would have permitted a reevaluation on the part of the public.
"Second," he paused, unsure of how to phrase it, "let me say that your knowledge of nuclear warfare and weaponry does you as much disservice as your knowledge of geography does you credit. We're not using traditional 'dirty' nukes for this; we don't have them. The warheads in the missiles we'll be using, the last few Peacekeepers we have in silos, are relatively 'clean.' The radioactive exposure for persons downwind of the blast, in the 'fallout zone' will be less in one year than the acceptable exposure for an x-ray technician."
"General, if you're trying to tell me that there won't be any radiation from these weapons, please save it for the talking heads," the President snapped. "Even 'clean' nukes are dirty."