«Yes, sir. And if the word gets around, most of them should head for Schockoe Bottom.»
Something about the facile explanation started to bother the corps commander. The general looked a little questioning for a moment. «How did you get the ornaments made so quickly?»
«Well, there is quite a bit of industry in the area,» Keene temporized.
«Or perhaps I should be asking what kind of ornaments they are?» asked the general, his suspicions now fully aroused.
«Well, we didn't have much of a choice . . .»
«What are they, Keene?» asked General Keeton.
«Well, you ever been behind a tractor-trailer, and noticed how on some of them, on the mudflaps, there are these shiny silhouettes . . . ?»
* * *
Ersin watched as the private hammered in the last iron stake topped with a golden silhouette of two busty females in a reclined position and shook his head.
«Yah know, boss,» said Mueller, «somebody's bound to have a cow about this.»
* * *
«And the defenses at Libby Hill are as complete as was planned for this battle,» continued the High Commander. «Later on we'll build concrete bunkers and such, but the Twelfth Corps is going to have it as good as it gets on such short notice. And we're bringing in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Corps from the Carolinas. Richmond is going to be a graveyard of Posleen,» he stated definitively.
«What about their data security?» asked the secretary of defense.
«There was a cyberpunk team in Richmond on an unrelated mission,» answered the High Commander. «They checked the Twelfth Corps's IVIS and FireTac systems. Both were infected by a virus that apparently noted the detection and performed an autodestruct.
«They're picking apart the remnants right now and scratching their heads like everyone else. But as far as NSA, the Cybers and CONARC's own Data Security department can determine, Twelfth Corps is fully mission capable, including all automated systems. On the other hand, they've also zeroed every weapon in the Corps on particular targets and are only awaiting the Posleen to open fire. They really don't need FireTac or IVIS.»
«So you're saying that this battle should go as planned?» asked the secretary, sarcastically.
«I did not plan the previous engagement,» said the High Commander.
«No, General,» said the President. «I planned that engagement, as I made plain on national television. What can we do about Ninth Corps?»
The general shook his head again. «We can pull out some of the supply personnel, but not many. I mean, there's a reason for every person who is that far forward. We don't have a terrain obstacle to interpose between Posleen and our support as we did with Tenth, so our downside is actually higher.
«If . . . when, the Posleen break through the defenses, they'll be able to engage the support elements, including artillery and supply units, that they weren't able to assault at the Dale City defense. Casualty estimates on this battle are double or triple the Tenth Corps battle.»
«And there's nothing we can do?» asked the secretary, incredulously.
«First Army has committed all of the Tenth Corps units that are reasonably cohesive to reinforce Ninth along with Tenth's Corps and division artillery, which was mainly behind the Occoquan. He was sending the Eighth and Eleventh Corps in to reinforce them, but he was countermanded by CONARC.»
«Why?» demanded the secretary.
«If Ninth can hold with all six divisions, two corps of artillery, and fixed, prepared positions, we'll send them in to reinforce. If it can't, and I do not expect it to, it is futile to throw away another sixty thousand troops. Besides,» he concluded, «First Army is strung from here to Boston. We're parceling them along the Potomac at crossings. We might have to use them to extract the refugees.»
«What about the ACS battalion?» asked the President.
«They are on their way. They should be there about three hours after the battle is joined. At that point the plan is to send them around Lake Jackson and hit the Posleen in the flank.»
The overloaded tractor-trailers carrying the Third Battalion Five-Fifty-Fifth Mobile Infantry Regiment had left the secure Interstate 81 hours before. The laboring trucks packed with half-ton suits had crossed the outer Blue Ridge before descending into the Virginia horse country. This was no-man's-land. Even the police had evacuated with the last civilians, heading to the Blue Ridge and safety.
To the troops, packed like sardines in the trucks, it had been a nightmarish ride. Although they each had hundreds of hours in their suits, lying on their backs under, in some cases, a dozen suits while swaying from side to side for hours in a tractor-trailer had been a shattering experience. There were several cases of troopers panicking; in one case the spasmodic gyrations of the panicked troop tore open the side of the truck, spilling two squads of ACS troopers out on the interstate to the general detriment of any vehicle that hit them. Between panic and motion nausea, the unit was in poor shape when the convoy ran into a Posleen ambush outside of Warrenton, VA.
The Posleen were not even skirmishers. The God King had gotten his fill of fighting humans when he lost almost his entire oolt to the guns of the North Carolina. Having lost all interest in engaging artillery he struck out in the direction of least resistance. He was one of the rare Posleen that was not spoiling for a fight.
Along the way he lost a few more oolt'os to random armed humans. They mostly fired at long range and from cover, but were remarkably accurate and persistent. And the oolt learned quickly not to bother with the residences. The few that did not explode in his face yielded only scraps of food and occasional bits of light treasure. Many had been cleared of anything of value. The God King and his forces followed U.S. 17 northward through the rolling hills of Spotsylvania, Stafford and Fauquier counties, past country farms, mostly deserted, and occasional clusters of houses. Nowhere did he encounter significant storehouses, but on the other hand he also did not encounter significant resistance; he felt it was a fair trade.
At the junction of 17 and 15/29 the group encountered a large abandoned vehicle. The cargo area revealed a vast storage of multiple types of foodstuffs. The side of the vehicle sported a picture of a food beast he had already encountered. The beast yielded a flat and tasteless food. The similarity in taste to the threshkreen caused some of the Kessentai to speculate that these might be the threshkreen's nestlings. The disparate sizes and conformation argued against it. But the Posleen had seen stranger methods of reproduction.
However, the cargo vehicle had many other types of food, many of them oddly spiced and prepared. Some of the material, sporting a picture of a white avian, tasted remarkably like nestling.
Other than the storehouses of the thresh it was the finest booty taken so far. Obviously, the cargo vehicles were to be captured whenever possible. They had found three more on the way north. Only one contained more foodstuffs but the others had useful mixed supplies.
Thus, when the four vehicles hove into view, the oolt'os followed their carefully conveyed and simple orders to open fire on the motive portion of the lead vehicle.
When the tractor-trailer containing Alpha Company and part of the battalion staff jackknifed, the heavy and refractory suits tumbled through the light sidewalls of the trailer like buckshot through paper. The troopers were thrown through the air and tumbled along the ground for multiple meters. The trailing trucks slammed on their brakes and, as soon as they slowed to a survivable speed, the truckers dove out and took shelter in the roadside ditch.
Most of the troops tucked themselves into balls as they flew through the air, the inertia of the thousand-pound suits carrying them hundreds of feet in an uncontrolled tumble. Since the Posleen company was more or less in line with the inertia of the vehicle, several of the troopers and the battalion intelligence officer were carried into its midst.