Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship (30 page)

Ia swallowed. She was touched by the transgendered woman’s faith but couldn’t dwell on it more than briefly. Too many plans had just changed. “I’ll try to be worthy, Private.”

Moving away from the hyperrelay, Ia headed for the office supplies stacked in the other corner at the back of the room. Fetching out an empty container and a box of datachips from under one of the tables, she pulled out the first dozen of the thin little rectangles with a touch of telekinesis. Light as a feather, they floated up and out, forming a halo around her hand.

“In the meantime, stand guard and make sure no one interrupts me. I have over three thousand sets of orders to revise and make perfect, and just over an hour to get it done.”

“I’ll have the hotel staff bring in a lunch sack for you at that end of the hour, something you can eat on the way to Army HQ, and I’ll fetch a couple energy drinks for starters, sir,” Jjones stated, her paramedical training coming to the fore. She moved out of her Parade Rest stance and headed for the door. “You’ll be burning through a lot of kinetic inergy to do that, so you’ll need food to replace whatever you use.”

“Thank you, Private,” Ia told Jjones, in between flipping her mind back and forth between reality and the timestreams, altering the orders inscribed on each of the many, many chips. This would indeed exhaust her if she didn’t replace all the energy spent. “I’ll have to commend you to the DoI for your thoughtfulness and good planning . . . along with everyone else who survives this debacle.”

To this day, I still do not know what prompted the Admiral-General to pick such a long-shot option. I
know
I have been a pain in her plans, the ache in her head, the wrench in her neatly ordered works. I have been belligerent, uncooperative, devious, obstructive, and blunt. I have withheld vital information repeatedly, snuck around behind her back, and bent the rules on multiple occasions, and she
knew
all of this . . . yet the woman still elevated me to a higher rank than even I had foreseen as probable. She gave me virtual free rein to do whatever I wanted, beyond all hopes and expectations for it . . . and a good thing, too, because I needed it, on Dabin.

So yeah, you bet your sweet asteroid I ran with it. Like a horse given its head and a long flat stretch to gallop in, with nothing to hold it back but the wind and the weight of its burdens, I ran. Clenched the bit in my teeth and ran as fast and hard as I could, because while I still don’t wish Mattox any harm, I do wish to heaven and back that he hadn’t done nearly so much damage on Dabin. I’ve piled as much of the repair work on Ginger as I can, but a fair share of the meddling—that’s with a lowercase “M”—that fair share of meddling also belongs on his shoulders.

Still, the Admiral-General took him out of the equation, for which many on Dabin thanked God, and gave me my shot at running the war on that world in the best ways that I saw fit. And maybe that’s my answer, right there. What would
you
do to set everything right again, or as right as the vagaries of Fate would allow? . . . Or rather, what would you let someone
else
do if you thought there was a chance they could do it?

~Ia

JULY 2, 2498 T.S.

“You’re on, sir, in five, four . . .” The technician held out his hand as he looked up, counting down silently with his fingers. This was a broadcast to the entire Division, something that would be picked up and eventually decoded by the Salik forces on Dabin in spite of the heavy encryptions used by the military, but it was something she couldn’t avoid.

Waiting a beat after he silently reached
one
, Ia addressed the dozen hovercameras floating in front of her. There was no corresponding viewscreen because this was a broadcast, not a workstation-to-workstation comm link. “Greetings. I am General Ia of the Space Force Command Staff. As you were informed by dispatch within the last few days, Brigadier General Mattox has been retired from combat command, and I have been appointed by Admiral-General Myang in his place.”

Retired
was a euphemism that would hopefully smooth things over between those troops who were still loyal to Mattox and those who wanted him gone. The messages delivered by her own soldiers had contained official news of the change in command and a set of preliminary orders that would get every group currently being engaged by the enemy out of immediate danger in time for this broadcast, as well as certain specific orders and general directives for the coming weeks.

This broadcast would cover the new command structure and the types of orders that they would now have to follow. First, though, she had to get the unseen ranks of men and women in almost thirty-five hundred individual Companies to trust her.

“As sometimes may happen with a major change in combat command,” Ia stated calmly, “there comes a change in command structure, strategies, and tactics . . . and yes, I do know the Salik are decoding this broadcast even as I send it. I do wish them good luck in figuring out what I am going to have you do, for they will need it.”

Mattox had approached his organization top-down, from the Division level to the Brigade, to the Battalion, the Legion, and finally down to the Company level. Below that were Platoons and Squads and teammate pairings. A good fifth of what Ia had sent out were Squad-level orders, but only when they absolutely had to have direction. What she needed now was to remind every single soldier listening to this broadcast, either right now or on a replay later, of what they had been taught to do back in Basic.

Not the hand-to-hand combat or the target practice, and not the monkey-gym antics of the confidence courses, but the group practices. Things that
weren’t
openly discussed in the civilian sectors because they were the
real
weapons in the hands of the Terran military. Battle tactics, the kind that depended on the on-the-spot information only a Squad, Platoon, or Company would know in time to make decisions that would do any actual good.

Her plans hinged on each person being able to act independently because she literally did not have the time to direct each and every piece of combat personally, second by second. It would be polar opposite to what Mattox had done to them and expected of them. Ia needed to remind the men and women watching this broadcast that they did have the training for this task.

“I realize many of you have little reason to trust a complete stranger. But while I have never served in the Army before now, I began my career as a Marines grunt, enlisted, ordered about, and expected to shoulder my share of the combat burden just like you. The Marines aren’t that much different than the Army, save that they’re mostly stuck in space, while you have the advantage in knowledge and skills when it comes to planet-side fighting, and a far better support system at your backs.”

A lie, but a face-saving one. The Marines and the Army were different in many ways, some blatantly so, others subtly. But morale, as she had reminded her interrogators, was the single most important tool in their hands. These were soldiers who had suffered heavy losses, restrictive orders, and a planet-side top brass who hadn’t given a damn for their suffering or their ideas on how to alleviate it, save where it would enhance Mattox’s own biased ideas of glory and strategy.

“If you are unsure of my reputation in small-unit tactics as General Ia . . . well, I know that many of you have at least heard of my reputation as Bloody Mary,” she said, smiling slightly, wryly, for the cameras. “Rest assured, I have kept that reputation fresh and dripping from my first week in Marines to my field promotion as an officer in the Navy, all the way to my years in the Special Forces. My service in the Army here on Dabin will be no different. I promise you this: follow my orders, and the enemy
will
bleed before we are through.”

Her nose itched. She couldn’t take a moment to rub at it, as that would spoil the tough, confident image she was trying to project in her newly issued Dress Blacks, with her half glittery gleaming down her chest on both sides of a medal apiece for each type, and a veritable rainbow of service-zone pins. She and her previous ship, the
Hellfire
, had pretty much covered all the Terran and jointly Terran-V’Dan star systems, along with many of the systems among their alien allies, in the first few years of the war before winding up on this world. She wanted the soldiers watching her to see that glittery and believe she had more than enough experience to back up her commands.

“For those of you doubting my claims, particularly when my predecessor made similar ones which did not come true, I would like to speak of some of the tactical plans I have enacted. Plans which
you
will now use. Listen
carefully
:

“Water Buffalo. Pitchfork. Cone. Cloud . . .” She enunciated each one calmly and levelly.

The important points of her speech were buried in plain, open Terranglo. The genius of her orders lay in the fact the Salik wouldn’t understand the images she was evoking, because they didn’t use any of these images in their battle-training simulations. Cryptography was easy enough to crack if one had time and a powerful enough computer, but a stenographic message always depended on knowing what each word secretly stood for.

She continued calmly, reciting words with images and associated meanings that each soldier, male and female, would remember very clearly from their months of training. “Clapboard. Triple-C. Chevron. Chevronelle. Drawbridge. Racetrack. And finally . . . Guerilla, Mobile, Positional.”

Save for those last three terms, the definitions for which the Salik
would
understand, each of the previous words in her list was a mnemonic: simple words defining the images of complex sets of instructions every recruit and cadet learned in Basic, regardless of Branch, all of which she wanted to evoke in each soldier’s mind.

The Water Buffalo was a slowly building central front of attack, the bulge in the middle distracting the enemy from the two “horns” which would attempt to encircle and flank their foe for a three-pronged pincer. The Pitchfork was for parallel thrusts through cluttered terrain, such as a heavy forest or an urban jungle, necessary since there was more than one town that had been captured and occupied by the enemy. The Triple-C was a series of nested firesacks, layered regions where the enemy would be forced to go through heavy defensive crossfire when attacking.

The others were similar memes, each one an image etched on a display screen during the many tactical lectures of Basic Training, each a combat maneuver that had been practiced and practiced and practiced back in their earliest days. Such things were learned purely by rote, doing them over and over and over until it was as much a soldier’s reflex to think along those lines as it was to block and throw a punch. More than that, throughout a combat soldier’s entire career, every single post-action report had to include a tactical analysis of what happened, what went right, what went wrong, and what could have been done to improve upon that action. It was a highly flexible, incredibly skilled method of continually training the soldiers of the Space Force across its four Branches, a training method very few militaries could match.

Her last three words were stated plainly to place these mnemonics in their context as small-unit tactical maneuvers . . . and as a reminder of the Space Force’s normal, bottom-up way of organizing any fighting force.

“Cast your minds back to when you first learned these things, and all the times in which you analyzed and improved them,” Ia urged in a calm, confident tone. “These are the parts of your training that required you to exercise and utilize all six of your senses
and
your minds, not just your muscles or your machines. I know that these things are the exact same as what I myself learned in the Marines as a recruit, and learned again as a cadet in the Navy. I know you will remember them, and execute them as well as any soldier I have been privileged to fight alongside.”

Again, a small lie; Marines training was far more intense, more focused on ship-to-ship or ship-to-station battles. It was very much more focused on small-unit tactics than the far larger movements and maneuvers of an army the size of this one. But she knew that in the Navy and the Special Forces, where such things weren’t strictly necessary to learn for certain jobs, the crewmen and service personnel all had to train in the same set of tactical understanding before anyone was allowed to leave either enlisted Basic or an officer’s Academy. In a pinch, even the Chaplain Corps would know what to do, provided they could remember it under pressure.

But aside from some of the focus and the intensity level, the Army was no different than the Marines, and far better trained than the auxiliary forces. The trick was to remind the unseen men and women watching her of these things. Ia nodded slowly as she stared into the hovering cameras, confirming the understanding dawning in most of the men and women listening to her words.

“That’s right,” she urged, knowing via the timestreams that they were indeed beginning to understand. “You know exactly what sort of commands I am giving you. Commands
very
different from the brigadier general’s. With that said, here are your
strategic
objectives:

“The Salik are building wasp nests in the ground and in the trees. Break them up and drive their occupants into the open. Work in coordination with your nearest brothers and sisters so that you do not step on each other’s toes or attempt to throw a rock at a nest in the wrong direction at the wrong moment of time . . . but break those nests wide open.

“Go for a
walk
, meioas,” she urged the unseen men and women watching her broadcast. “Take a stroll through these Dabinian woods and smack down every hive you meet. I took a similar walk past an enemy nest a few days ago, and did just that. Now it is your turn. Focus on my words and understand their meaning. Those are your
strategic
objectives,” she repeated, wanting them to understand that
her
command structure was very much not going to be top-down. She was not going to dictate anything tactical, save for those hand-delivered, temporally vital messages that had already gone out. “For the rest of it . . . you already know what you need to do. I am ordering you to go do it.

“One more thing. Do not feel anger for the enemy, though as you fight deeper and deeper into their territories, you will see the atrocities which they will use against you, too, if they catch you,” she stated, meeting each camera pickup in turn to give the impression she was meeting everyone’s gaze. “Do not waste your energies on hatred. Anger clouds the mind, wrecks the judgment, and pulls all your plans out of alignment. Instead, if you must feel anything toward them, then just pity them. Because of their arrogance and their species-centric blindness, they are a dying race. Their time is drawing to an end. Crack open their nests, shake them loose from the soil of Dabin, and brush them away. That is all you can do, and all you need to do.

“I am the Prophet of a Thousand Years, and your duly appointed Commanding Officer for this fight . . . but while I can see what needs to be done for us to succeed, I am just one person. I can only tell you what needs to be done; the rest is up to you to carry through.” Squaring her shoulders, she gave the center camera a level look. “You have your orders, soldiers. You also have my trust. Get to it, and get it done as soon as you can. General Ia out.”

The technician touched a control on his portable workpad. Tiny red lights on the cameras blinked off. He nodded, confirming the transmission was done.