Steel Gauntlet (3 page)

“Yes. I flew a Raptor.” He shrugged. “It was a piece of junk, compared to what the boys fly these days, but still a good atmospheric fighter craft. I was shot up but never down.” Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant smiled wryly. She appreciated Marcus’s self-deprecating sense of humor and sage advice. Of all her ministers, he truly understood the human cost of war.

She stood for a moment before a mirror and straightened her clothes. The small chamber behind the podium was equipped with a full bar and other amenities but she decided against indulging. There was just too much work to be done.

“During your administration we’ve intervened on Elneal and Wanderjahr, Madame,” Berentus said,

“for humanitarian reasons. You overcame the opposition to those operations too. St. Cyr is a threat to all of us because he can project his military force to other worlds in the Confederation. We don’t know how far he’s spread his coils throughout the member worlds with his loans and investments either. He can pull a lot of strings among our delegates. He attacked our embassy, for heaven’s sake, killed our people. And besides that, he’s a goddamned murderer! Those worthless bastards!”

“Don’t talk about our—” She hesitated slightly. “—Congress-persons that way, Marcus,” she murmured, leaning over and kissing her Minister of War affectionately on the cheek. “But you know, Marcus, what that delegate shouted from the floor? If this war goes sour, we’re all finished. It’s happened before.”

“I know, Madame, I know. But in the navy we used to have an expression for such things: Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. Besides, I’m ready for retirement. There’s only one thing—” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Marcus, you old gunfighter, I don’t give a damn about this job, or all the trappings of this office either. There are plenty of people out there who’d willingly take over my responsibilities, and most of them would do a better job than I ever could.” She waved her minister’s protest to silence with a hand. “But that ‘one thing’ that bothers you bothers me too. I don’t want to sacrifice the lives of our fighting men needlessly.” She shivered involuntarily. Madame Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant had a son and a daughter serving as ratings in the fleet. “Marcus, let’s hope and pray the brass hats have it right this time.”

Admiral Horatio “Seabreeze” Perry, Chairman of the Confederation Combined Chiefs of Staff, thought he had it right, as he always thought he had it right every time in his career since he’d been an ensign. The briefing he’d arranged for Madame Chang-Sturdevant the week before had gone off superbly, except for one annoying little detail.

“Madame President,” Admiral Perry began, “allow me to introduce General Markham Benteen, commander of the Hefestus Conglomerate’s armed forces.”

A white-faced man in battle-dress uniform stood and bowed politely. President Chang-Sturdevant couldn’t help noticing that the general’s hand shook ever so slightly as he sat down and placed it back on the conference table. He looked exhausted; “defeated” was the word that came to her unbidden. She realized suddenly that the admiral had spoken of his command in the present tense, obviously a professional courtesy, because everyone knew his forces on Diamunde had been wiped out and he was now a political refugee, along with the few surviving members of Hefestus’s management staff.

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

In terse, clipped sentences the general told her how St. Cyr’s forces had attacked his with a ferocity thus far unmatched in the many wars Diamunde had suffered as her corporate rulers vied for supremacy.

Most of the Hefestus corporate management were killed in St. Cyr’s attack on the embassy, but Benteen and his staff had managed to survive. By the time they could rally armed resistance it was already too late; St. Cyr’s aircraft had demolished Benteen’s air force on the ground, knocked out his headquarters complex, and heavily damaged his depots and garrison installations before the rubble at the embassy had even cooled.

“We could have resisted,” General Benteen concluded, “but it was the tanks that got us.”

“ ‘Tanks’?” Madame President asked. She thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. She glanced at Berentus and Admiral Perry for confirmation. They nodded.

“Heavily armored fighting vehicles—” General Benteen said.

“Yes, ma’am,” General Hanover Eastland, Chief of the Confederation Army Staff interrupted. He was afraid Benteen was on the verge of breaking down. “They have not been used in warfare for hundreds of years. I believe St. Cyr built them in secret, funneling Tubalcain’s R and D money into their construction.

He called them ‘tractors,’ and said they were to be used in the company’s mining operations. We’ve prepared a full intelligence briefing for you.”

“We couldn’t stop them,” Benteen went on as if he had never been interrupted. “They’re monsters.

They weigh up to sixty thousand kilos and move as fast as a landcar. Only concentrated plasma bolts are powerful enough to penetrate their armor, but they wouldn’t stand still long enough for our gunners to hit them. Our artillery just bounced off their hulls. When they didn’t blow my men apart with their guns, they just, just....ran over them where they stood—”

“Ma’am,” Admiral Perry said hastily, cutting General Benteen off again, “I’d now like to introduce Admiral Hank Donovan, our intelligence officer. Admiral.”

“Madame President, this is our enemy.” An image flashed onto the vidscreen at one end of the conference room. It showed a middle-aged man of indeterminate height with close-cropped brown hair and a prominent nose. His jaw was square, with a marked cleft in the chin. His eyebrows were dark and bushy. He seemed to be staring out of the vidscreen speculatively. There was just the slightest hint of a smile on his lips—or perhaps a nervous condition that drew up the muscles on the right side of his mouth.

At any rate, it gave him a somewhat sardonic expression. Overall, though, his visage was rather handsome, not the face of a megamaniacal killer.

“That is Major General Marston Moore St. Cyr,” Admiral Donovan intoned.

“Excuse me, Admiral, ‘Major General,’ did you say?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant interrupted.

“Yes, ma’am. Oh, yes, I see. He picked that title because his idol, Oliver Cromwell, achieved early fame as a cavalry commander, and in European armies of Cromwell’s day the major general commanded the cavalry. St. Cyr fancies himself a dashing cavalryman.” Donovan smirked. Madame Chang-Sturdevant had the impression Admiral Donovan might be seriously underrating the man. “To continue. He was born on Diamunde eighty years ago. He has never seen military service. He was offworld, on Carhart’s World, studying engineering at the University of M’Jumba, when the decisive battles took place on Diamunde that left the Hefestus Conglomerate and Tubalcain Enterprises the dominant corporations on the planet. During the many skirmishes and turf battles that have characterized business practice on Diamunde since then, St. Cyr was working his way up through the corporate management team at Tubalcain.”

“Then how’d he get so damned smart about military affairs?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant asked suddenly. She was beginning to dislike Admiral Donovan.

“Well, ma’am, there’s a lot of similarity between duty on a military staff and work in a corporate staff.

Look at how many retired flag officers go on to head up corporations, for instance. Besides that, St. Cyr is a genius of sorts. It is said he has based his life on three books: his politics on Niccolo Machiavelli’s
The Prince
, his personal relationships on Shakespeare’s
Richard III
, and his military expertise on Heinz Guderian’s
Panzer Leader
. That’s probably oversimplifying it a bit, but the man is very well read and a natural, if totally ruthless, leader. There are many examples of men like him in history, ma’am, who took naturally to soldiering. Nathan Bedford Forrest and Oliver Cromwell are two such. As I mentioned earlier, St. Cyr admires Cromwell a lot. You know who they were, I presume?”

“Yes, Admiral, I do,” President Chang-Sturdevant replied sarcastically. She was beginning to dislike the Admiral a lot. “I suppose like Forrest, his motto is ‘Get there first with the most,’ and he’s fashioned his forces on Cromwell’s New Model Army, prayer services and Puritan self-denial and all?”

“Ahem...” Donovan’s face reddened. “Well, not quite, ma’am. Uh, here is another gentleman to watch,” he said, rushing on. The image of Clouse Stauffer replaced that of St. Cyr. “This is St. Cyr’s chief of staff.” Stauffer was a strikingly handsome man with dark hair, an aquiline nose, strong chin, and intelligent eyes. “His name is Clouse Stauffer. He started out as St. Cyr’s administrative officer when St.

Cyr was chief of a research project at a company called Vulcan Enterprises, before Tubalcain bought them out. That was forty years ago. Nobody knows St. Cyr better than this man. We suspect he played a significant role in St. Cyr’s military preparations and will continue to do so once the invasion is under way.”

“If there is an invasion, Admiral. First I have to get the Confederation Congress to agree we need to invade. I’m going to need the support of all you gentlemen in that effort, and believe me, it’s not going to be easy.” Madame Chang-Sturdevant signed Admiral Donovan to continue with his briefing.

“Madame President, what you must know about St. Cyr is that for forty years he has slowly and meticulously built up a loyal following among Tubalcain’s employees. He showed promise early in his career, and everyone expected that sooner or later he would rise to a position of great influence and power in the company’s affairs. They were content to wait for that day, when he would reward their loyalty. You know that among the people of Diamunde company loyalty is probably stronger even than family relationships. They have never heard of representative government there and wouldn’t want it if they had. The companies in turn take very good care of their people, but the bottom line on Diamunde has always been profits. Human considerations have always come second to corporate survival. And everybody there accepts that.”

“What is your plan for invasion?” she asked.

“We will work out the details once the Congress gives you the go-ahead, ma’am,” Admiral Perry answered. “But the Marines will go in first in divisional strength and secure a beachhead. They will be reinforced by the army. From there they’ll spread out and engage St. Cyr’s forces.”

“We’ll get ‘em there on time,” Admiral Jaime “Spider” Webb, Chief of Naval Operations, promised.

A short, slight man with steely blue eyes and curly hair, Admiral Webb was known for his incisive wit and his ability to make quick and correct decisions. When he retired, which was expected to happen soon, he would be sorely missed.

“What about these tanks?” Berentus asked

“He calls them ‘Toyful Panthers,’ ” Benteen said dully.

“Uh, that’s ‘Teufelpanzers,’ ” Donovan corrected Benteen. “I believe it’s Old High German for ‘devil tank.’ ”

“Armaments? Capabilities?” Chang-Sturdevant asked.

“We are not too sure, ma’am, aside from what Admiral Donovan has already mentioned,” Admiral Perry responded. “We believe St. Cyr has at least enough tanks to equip two divisions, supported by infantry. We guess their organization and tactics are based on those of the German Army during World War Two, since St. Cyr admires them so much. But General Benteen is the only person we have who’s seen them in action and, uh,” he nodded at the defeated general, “he had other things on his mind at the time besides, um, studying nomenclature.” This was meant as a bit of levity, but neither Benteen nor Chang-Sturdevant took it that way.

“How many tanks would that be?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant answered.

“Two thousand,” General Benteen answered. “I did manage to keep count,” he said, looking directly at Admiral Perry. “There are fifteen tanks to a platoon in St. Cyr’s army. I found that out the hard way, up very close. Since there are three platoons to a company, three companies to a battalion, three battalions to a regiment, three regiments to a division, that makes one thousand, give or take a few, for each division.”

Chang-Sturdevant began to experience a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Admiral, do we have anything that can stop these things?”

“Madame President, we do,” answered a heavyset man with closely cropped hair who’d remained silent up until now. The speaker was Commandant Kinsky “Kickass” Butler, Confederation Marine Corps. Commandant Kinsky was famous for his terseness. “It’s called the Straight Arrow, Madame.” Madame Chang-Sturdevant looked questioningly at Admiral Perry and turned to Minister Berentus.

He shrugged.

“Madame President, the Straight Arrow is old technology that was developed specifically to stop heavily armored vehicles,” Admiral Donovan said. “It’s a rocket-propelled explosive charge that will penetrate armor.”

“How old is this technology, Admiral?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant asked suspiciously.

Admiral Donovan hesitated. “It was developed, um....well, about three hundred years ago, ma’am.”

“Three hundred...” Madame Chang-Sturdevant gasped.

“Well, there was no need of them, so they were scrapped two hundred or so years ago, but now that this St. Cyr has resurrected, as it were, armored fighting vehicles, well, the army found some money in its budget to build some prototypes, and we’re putting them back into production immediately, Madame.” Admiral Perry added brightly, “Our next budget submission will have a line item for the continued production of these weapons.” A pregnant silence descended upon the room. “Uh, we’ll need them now, you see, in case somebody else gets the idea to—” Madame Chang-Sturdevant’s icy stare froze him into silence.

The silence became embarrassing as Chang-Sturdevant continued staring in outrage at her Combined Chiefs. “Gentlemen,” she began at last, and coughed. “Gentlemen,” she began again. She felt that she was losing control of herself quickly. “H-How many of these things do we have in our inventory?”

“Well, we’re rushing them into production,” Admiral Perry answered. “Within a month we should have—”

“Goddamnit! I asked, how many of these things do we have right now?” Madame Chang-Sturdevant shouted.