Starfist: Wings of Hell (15 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen, the doctrine upon which Task Force Aguinaldo is basing its Haulover campaign derives from the classic treatise written by the Prussian general Carl Maria von Clausewitz, who lived from 1780 to 1831. It is called
Vom Kriege,
or
On War.

“The basic Clausewitzian principle we used in drawing up our war plan was that of
economy of force,
the principle of employing all available combat power in the most effective way possible, in an attempt to allocate a minimum of essential combat force to any secondary or ancillary efforts. Economy of force, then, is the judicious employment and distribution of forces toward the primary objective of the conflict. No part of a force should ever be left without purpose. The allocation of available combat power to such tasks as limited attacks, defense, delays, deception, or even retrograde operations is measured in order to achieve mass at decisive points elsewhere on the battlefield. In von Clausewitz’s own words, ‘Every unnecessary expenditure of time, every unnecessary detour, is a waste of power, and therefore contrary to the principles of strategy.’

“I trust you will find the following charts and graphs of particular interest and I direct your attention to this one, which demonstrates the ratio of available maneuver elements plus aggregate firepower of those elements that can be brought against the estimated enemy forces in the area of operations in the terrain to be expected on Haulover. Now, you will see that comparing this chart with the next one…”

The briefing went steadily downhill after that point. Much later that day, when he’d managed to pull General Aguinaldo aside for a moment, Senator Query asked, “General, for my constituents who don’t understand military jargon, just what is your objective in this campaign? In plain Standard English?”

“Senator,” Aguinaldo replied, “in ‘plain Standard English’ it is to find ’em, fix ’em, and fuck ’em.”

“Um, General, ah, maybe that’s a bit
too
plain?” Still, Query couldn’t suppress a slight grin.

“Okay, Senator, we’re going to squash the Skinks into a little spot on the floor and then wash them down the drain. You can announce that on the six o’clock news and everyone’ll know
exactly
what we’re going to do when we get all our forces deployed against these Skinks.”

“But General, has anyone tried to contact these aliens, find out what they want, what motivates them? Negotiate with them? Could we perhaps coexist? I mean, from their first appearance in Human Space, their presence was kept secret from everyone, and all we’ve ever done is fight them. Chang-Sturdevant never got the backing of either the Congress or the voters to go to war with these creatures. She built no consensus on this matter. No alternatives to war with them have ever been tried, have they?”

Aguinaldo regarded Senator Query silently for a moment. “Senator, I was not consulted on the policy of keeping the existence of the Skinks a secret from you or the citizens of this Confederation. But I think the President got her ‘consensus’ when she announced the threat, laid everything out in public in her speech. I am convinced, sir, and so shall you be when you talk to men who’ve seen the Skinks up close and personal, that killing is their way of negotiating and that no, we cannot coexist with them.”

Sneedly Grimmer perked up when Colonel Rene Raggel of the Seventh Military Police Battalion gave his presentation. Now here was something any politician could understand: military-civil relations. But by that time Senator Query was so far gone in REM sleep that Grimmer decided he’d reserve his comments for later, when his boss had had a chance to cool off and could pay attention. He made a note to talk to Raggel when they visited the units, which was scheduled for the afternoon. Meanwhile, as one briefer after the other droned on and on, Grimmer looked up Raggel’s biography on his reader. All the visitors had been given these bios on the task force commanders as a courtesy and now Grimmer discovered how useful they could be.
“Traitor!”
he whispered into Query’s ear. “The man’s a traitor.”

The three members of the Seventh MP Battalion about to receive their awards stood at attention before the senators and their retinue. Colonel Raggel had drawn up the entire battalion for the ceremony. Raggel turned to General Aguinaldo. “Sir, I’d like to request that Senator Smedley-Kuso come with me and do the honors. The men would appreciate it very much if a Confederation senator pinned on their decorations.”

“Sure, Colonel, they’re your men. Senator, it’s a great honor to be asked to assist in the awards ceremony. Are you up to it?”

“Oh, General!” Olivia Smedley-Kuso perked up at these words, the fatigue of the long day disappearing instantly. One thing that revived her spirits more even than having her toes massaged was a photo opportunity. “Did they win them fighting anyone?”

“No, Senator,” Colonel Raggel answered. “These are commendations for meritorious achievement, for the superb work they’ve done in getting the battalion ready for deployment to the theater of war. But they’re important recognition of jobs well done and they’ll mean a lot to these men.”

“Well, yes,” she cooed. “I’m honored!”

Sergeant Major Steiner called the battalion to attention. The battalion adjutant handed the medal boxes and award certificates to Colonel Raggel and then announced, “Attention to orders!” As the pair stood before each man the adjutant read the award certificate and Colonel Raggel handed Senator Smedley-Kuso the medal, which she awkwardly pinned on the flap of the man’s tunic pocket. The first one was rather difficult for her, with her large, sweaty fingers, but by the second man she was getting the hang of it. Senator Smedley-Kuso, pinning medals on heroes! That was really going to look good to the voters back on Wilkins’s World!

The third man turned into a disaster. Really enthusiastic now, Smedley-Kuso thrust the pin on the back of the medal so hard into the man’s pocket flap that it went all the way through and stabbed him in the chest.

“Goddammit!” he shouted.

“Colonel! Did you hear what that man just
said
?” Senator Olivia Kancho Smedley-Kuso exclaimed, horrified.

“Oh, well, fuck’im if he doesn’t want the goddamned thing,” Raggel responded. He’d waited all his life for a moment like this.

“So, Colonel, I see by your bio that you were an aide to General Davis Lyons during the late unpleasantness on Ravenette,” Sneedly Grimmer was saying. They’d just finished the disastrous awards ceremony and were sitting in the battalion mess for refreshments before leaving. They were drinking real, brewed coffee and eating cakes made from real flour and sugar, not the artificial stuff they’d been fed in Aguinaldo’s mess. At the sight and smell of
real
food, Senator Olivia Kancho Smedley-Kuso had recovered her composure and was chatting gaily with General Aguinaldo at a nearby table, her recent embarrassment evidently forgotten, for the moment anyway.

“Uh, what was that, Colonel?” Raggel had been thinking about the awards ceremony. He was not at all worried that his offhand remark would be held against him, but he was really ashamed of himself for having embarrassed the soldier involved, even though the man, along with everyone within hearing, had burst out laughing.

“I said, I see where you were an aide to the traitor, General Davis Lyons.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Grimmer’s voice had taken on a hard edge now.

“General Lyons did his duty, as any soldier would. He was against the secession vote. And I might remind you, Grimmer, that General Cazombi, who is now the Chairman of the Combined Chiefs, recognized that fact when he signed the surrender agreement with General Lyons.”

“Well, that was a very liberal set of terms. There are those who disagreed—”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Grimmer.” Raggel held up a hand. “But the Congress upheld them and they were fair and honorable terms. Both General Lyons and I as well as every other man in our army swore loyalty oaths to the Confederation. And also let me remind you, sir, that we would never have gone to war against the Confederation if President Chang-Sturdevant’s government had been more honest with us about the Skink threat. And she has very bravely and very publicly acknowledged that fact. So I don’t want to hear any more of this shit from you or anyone else about Lyons being a ‘traitor.’” Raggel’s voice had risen, causing heads to turn in his direction.
I’m really putting my foot into it today,
he thought ruefully.

“Well, it just is, I find it intriguing how a man like you can just switch your loyalty so smoothly, fighting us one day, fighting
for
us the next,” Grimmer said with a smirk.

Raggel said nothing for a long moment, then answered, “I am a soldier, Mr. Grimmer, as it is rumored you yourself once were. My loyalty is to my commander but, just to reassure you, after we were defeated on Ravenette and surrendered, I signed a loyalty oath to the Constitution of the Confederation of Human Worlds, which I am now prepared to defend with my life if necessary.”

“A piece of paper, Colonel.” Sneedly Grimmer sneered again.

Colonel Raggel’s fist mashed Grimmer’s nose in a full centimeter. Two days later the delegation left. Two days after that the XVIII Corps received its deployment orders. Someone convinced Sneedly Grimmer not to press charges.

CHAPTER TWELVE

As soon as the
Grandar Bay
joined the still-assembling gator fleet in orbit around Haulover, Lieutenant General Patrice Carano, commander of the XVIII Corps, summoned Ensign Jak Daly of Fourth Force Reconnaissance Company. Daly was the commander of the two-squad Force Recon detachment that discovered the Skinks on Haulover. With Daly summoned, Carano contacted Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon on the
Grandar Bay
and asked the brigadier to join him on the Crowe-class amphibious battle cruiser CNSS
Chapultepec
—and to bring the commander of Thirty-fourth FIST’s reconnaissance squad.

Carano first met privately with Sturgeon. The tone was cool, but cordial. The army general didn’t have anything against Marines, it was simply that Thirty-fourth FIST had been added to his corps
after
he left Arsenault and he knew neither the unit nor its commander. But considering that Thirty-fourth FIST had more contact with the Skinks than the rest of the Confederation military combined, he was glad to have those Marines with him.

After establishing Thirty-fourth FIST’s position in the order of battle and Sturgeon’s place in the chain of command—a component element of the corps and reporting directly to the corps CG respectively—Carano called Ensign Daly and Staff Sergeant Wu into his office. Daly’s Force Recon detachment of eight Marines had suffered one dead and two too severely injured for fleet sick bays to deal with, so the badly wounded were still in stasis bags until they could reach a navy hospital. That left Daly with five Marines in his command, and three of them had been wounded in the actions with the Skinks. Carano had high regard for Force Recon, but he didn’t think five, plus their commander, was enough to provide the eyes-on-the-ground he needed. That was why he wanted Sturgeon to bring the commander of his FIST recon squad; he intended to join the two units together under Daly’s command, with Wu as his assistant, as XVIII Corps’s primary ground reconnaissance element. He told them so. Daly seemed not fully comfortable with having FIST-level recon Marines attached to him but didn’t object. Staff Sergeant Wu said he looked forward to working under Force Recon. Carano sent the two to his G3 to get the details of what they were to do when they went planetside.

A reinforced platoon went planetside with Ensign Daly and Staff Sergeant Wu. Its assigned mission was to provide security around Marine House in Sky City. Wu and his twelve recon Marines traveled with an army squad in one of the three Dragons the Essay carried. Daly elected to ride in the same Dragon as the army platoon leader—ostensibly to confer with him on how to provide security. He didn’t get any conferring done; the army lieutenant had never made a combat assault landing before, and the straight-down plunge had him continually sick almost from the instant the gut-churning planetward dive began.

Corporals Ryn Jaschke and Harv Belinski, with two landcars, met Daly, Wu, and the other FIST recon Marines at Beach Spaceport. Daly introduced his men to Wu but held off on the rest of the introductions until they were at Marine House and the FIST recon Marines could meet all of the Force Recon Marines. Jaschke and Belinski followed Daly’s lead and said just about nothing on the short drive through Sky City to the edge of the plateau that held the spaceport and Haulover’s capital city, where the Force Recon Marines had their base of operations.

The main room of Marine House, which had felt so spacious when nine Marines met in it to plan their missions, debrief, or just relax, felt crowded with the thirteen FIST recon Marines and the remaining six from Fourth Force Recon. But nobody expected to be in the house long enough for sleeping accommodations to be a problem.

After quick introductions, Daly began the planning session by projecting his map onto the room’s rear wall, between the corridor leading to the back door and the door to the shorter hallway to the second bath and two bedrooms; it was the largest open stretch of wall in the house. While studying the map and listening to Daly, the Marines ate a meal that Lance Corporals Hans Ellis, Santiago Rudd, and Elin Skripska had prepared while Jaschke and Belinski were picking up the others at the spaceport.

“This is where we are,” Daly said, using a laser to indicate the location of Sky City, in the lower left-hand corner of the map. “And here’s where we found the Skink base, a thousand klicks to the northeast.” He pointed at an area in the northeast map corner. “The
Broward County
has found more signs of Skink bases here, here, and here, and we’ve confirmed those locations,” he said. The bases were widely separated, but all were at about one thousand kilometers distance, in an arc that ran from north to east.

“Not everybody here has seen the Skinks,” Daly said, looking at Wu and his men.

“Actually, Mr. Daly,” Wu said, “we ran into them on Kingdom. We not only saw the same kind of Skinks you’ve been attacked by, but we saw them in their uniforms, and we fought their giants and their swordsmen, which, unless I was misinformed, you haven’t.”

Daly nodded at Wu. “You haven’t been misinformed, but evidently I have. My apologies.”

Wu waved off the apology. “No harm, no foul, sir.”

“All right,” Daly said, mentally kicking himself for assuming that he and his men were the only ones who’d fought the Skinks—he’d been told that Thirty-fourth FIST or its elements had already encountered them twice. “We all know what kind of creatures we’re up against. Have you seen any of their underground facilities?” The last was directed at Wu.

“Yes, sir. We examined several Skink tunnels on Kingdom, and retrieved some of their materials for the scientists to study.”

Daly nodded. “Did the tunnel systems you examined have multiple levels?”

Wu shook his head. “They were under what passed for high ground in a swampy area.”

“Here, at least in the one we visited, they’re in mountains and are multilayered.” Daly turned off the map display and projected a 2-D vid onto the same wall. “Here are the highlights of what our minnie found in the first complex we examined.” The low-grade vid went on for fifteen minutes, showing chambers that held war machines; smallish armored vehicles, artillery, and aircraft of types unfamiliar to the Marines; and what looked like maintenance depots for the equipment.

“We didn’t see aircraft on Kingdom,” Wu remarked. “What was your minnie disguised as?”

“Norway brown rat,” Daly said. He smiled at Wu’s surprise. “They stowed away on the colonization ships. They’ve got no natural predators on Haulover, and seem to thrive on the local grains and other seeds, so they proliferated wildly and are found throughout the continent. Sky City has an active rat eradication program,” he said when he saw some of the Marines looking into corners and shadows of the room, “so there aren’t many in the city.”

The vid continued, showing chambers with stacks of munitions, fuel depots, and crates with indecipherable markings. Other chambers were filled with what appeared to be foodstuffs, located near food service facilities. There was a complete hospital. The vid showed barracks facilities sufficient to hold five thousand men. And there were tunnels leading off into areas the minnie hadn’t gone into on its first visit.

“We’ve been back three more times,” Daly said when the vid ended, “and took more minnies. Enough to get what we think is a complete map of the interior.” He touched a button on his controller and a 3-D map of the cave and tunnel complex was projected above the low table in the middle of the room. The FIST recon Marines studied it with a great deal of interest. “We found more of the same in later recons. I estimate that this one complex houses thirty to forty thousand Skinks.”

There were a couple of low whistles.

“You said you’ve confirmed those other locations,” Wu said.

Daly nodded. “We’ve sent minnies in, enough to confirm that they’re complexes similar to the first one we reconned in detail. We didn’t recon them as thoroughly as the first, but we think they’re about the same in scope.

“What we’re going to do now that you’re here is check out some of the other locations where
Broward County
has detected possible Skink activity.” He turned the tunnel map off and projected a new map on the wall, larger scale, and showing an area northwest of the first. Four areas were marked on it. “I will take a team consisting of Jaschke, Ellis, and Skripska to this area.” He used his pointer to show which one he meant. “Staff Sergeant Wu, assign your teams to the other three. I’m going to be in the field, so I want you to stay here in command of our ops and comm center, with Corporal Belinski and Lance Corporal Rudd.”

Daly looked at Belinski and Rudd, who clearly wanted to object to being left behind. “We’ve been over this already. You might be ninety-five percent recovered from your wounds, but you aren’t one-hundred percent. We’ve got enough people now that I can afford to leave you behind until you’re fully recovered.”

Then to Wu, “If one of the teams gets into trouble and needs rescue, take that army security platoon outside to pull the team out.”

Wu cocked an eyebrow at Daly. “On what authority will I give that doggie lieutenant marching orders?”

“You heard Lieutenant General Carano. If we need anything we don’t have, call him and ask for it. It’ll be ours.”

“What about Brigadier Sturgeon? You know, my chain of command.”

Daly shook his head. “You’re part of my command now. You aren’t working for your FIST anymore—we work for the corps commander. If you need anything, go directly to him.

“The Haulover authorities have given us the use of a small aircraft. When we leave here, we will go to a location southwest of Sky City, using that aircraft and our landcars. We will rendezvous with an AstroGhost here.” He projected another map and lasered the spot. “It will take us to drop points near our areas of operation.” To Wu he said, “I’ll have the AstroGhost come back here to stand by for you in case you need to come to anybody’s rescue.”

Wu’s eyes lit up at that. Like all FIST-level recon Marines, he’d heard rumors about the highly stealthed, top secret AstroGhost shuttle that was capable of atmospheric as well as orbit-to-surface flight, and even beyond-orbit-to-surface, but he had never even seen one let alone ridden one. He almost hoped one of the teams would need extraction so he’d have the opportunity to ride the AstroGhost. Almost, but not quite; if one of the teams needed emergency extraction, it probably meant wounded or dead Marines. More than likely,
his
Marines.
That
wasn’t worth a ride in an AstroGhost.

After that, nobody had further questions for Daly so he wrapped up the meeting with assignment of call signs. The Marines who were going got their weapons and equipment ready.

The AstroGhost dropped off second recon team a shade west of something more than eleven hundred kilometers due north of Sky City. The suspected Skink base the team was to recon was a bit less than eleven hundred klicks from the capital, but the four Marines would approach it from behind on the theory that security would be lighter in that direction.

The FIST recon Marines wore the same chameleons that the infantry did, not the superior ones that Force Recon had, so they had to move more cautiously than Force Recon teams did in order to avoid detection. But the FIST recon Marines’ chameleons were impregnated with a neutralizer for the phosphoric acid mix shot by the Skinks’ acid guns so they were safer from injury from the Skinks’ primary infantry weapon.