He paused for a moment, obviously trying to find a good way to say something. «I think that if you haven't talked about this you probably have thought it. It may be, probably will be, that some of those bridges will have . . . refugees on them when the Posleen come into close contact.
«You have all seen the news and official reports from Barwhon and Diess; you know what it is like for refugees with the Posleen. You may be tempted to let the refugees over the bridges and blow the bridge up with Posleen on it. Gentlemen, I will have court-martialed anyone who does that. You have no flexibility in this. You will blow the bridge when the Posleen reach five hundred meters distance. We cannot take the risk of the Posleen capturing a bridge. Is that clear?» There was a muted rumble of ascent from a ring of serious faces. «Very well, are there any questions?»
Only one hand was raised, that of the acting assistant division engineer. A terribly young, recent graduate of the University of Virginia. He was just out of the state-sponsored OCS that was providing most of the new crop of Virginia's officers.
«Yes, Lieutenant Young?»
«And if we are in the interdiction circle, sir?»
The commander paused and looked around the circle of serious older faces. Most of them had known each other off and on for years and he wondered how much longer he would be looking at the same group. «Well, Lieutenant, in that case we die and all of those we love die with us. And all we can do is take as many Posleen with us to hell as we can.»
* * *
Mueller had driven the quiet engineer around town since just after sunrise. They had done the Fan and the university district in the morning and south Richmond—with its unique intermingled odor of petrochemical plants, paper manufacture and tobacco processing—in the early afternoon. Now, as the afternoon wore on, Mueller had negotiated the tour into Schockoe Bottom. After a brief tour around the Bottom, he intended to head up to Libby Hill and the best view of Richmond around.
Instead the engineer gave his first command of the entire tour, ordering him to turn down Twelfth Street then following it around onto Byrd. After a dizzying series of turns and three stops to consult the U.S. Geological Survey map they had brought, they were stopped under the Schockoe Slip underpass, a stone arch bridge that once connected the city proper to the Kanawaha Canal. Now it connected two trendy office complexes built into and around the nineteenth-century buildings.
«You're thinking of something,» stated Mueller, as the engineer again consulted the map, switching between the quadrangle and a larger street map. More detailed maps supplied by the city engineering department littered the backseat of the government sedan.
«Umm,» Keene replied, noncommittally. He got out and walked up the gray stone stairs from Canal Street to Schockoe Slip. He stopped at the top and looked down from the overpass into Schockoe Bottom. Mueller looked at the same scene and could see some good positions for a small-unit firefight, but not anything to interest a nationally renowned defense engineer.
None of the major city engineers or officials had been officially available to «sight-see.» The strategic plan for Richmond's defense was still up in the air, one of the reasons that Continental Army Command had sent John Keene. Keene's suggestions and use of terrain in the construction of the Tennessee River defenses had brought him to the attention of the chief engineer for Third Army. When Richmond's planning had begun to lag, the chief engineer had offered Keene's services to First Army as a useful addition.
However, despite the enthusiastic reception by the Twelfth Corps Commander, who was tasked with the defense of Richmond and southern Virginia, Keene was less enthusiastically received by the other engineers. Each of them had their own pet projects to advance and the internecine fighting was the fundamental reason that the defenses were lagging.
The Corps Engineer, Colonel Bob Braggly, commander of the Corps Engineering Brigade, preferred turning the Libby and Mosby Hills into a giant firebase and giving up the center of Richmond to the Posleen. The city engineer, given quasimilitary standing by the new «Fortress Forward» stance, absolutely refused to surrender one inch of ground, preferring the concept of a wall enclosing the entire city limits.
Various local engineering firms had been called in to break the deadlock. Instead they offered their own versions or negated each other's effects by weighing in on one side or the other. Either project was going to be the biggest engineering contract in a hundred years of Richmond's history, ten or twenty times as large as the Floodwall project.
The corps commander had flatly stated that there was no way to defend a wall that extensive with the troops at hand. But one of his subordinates, the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division commander, had bypassed the corps commander in the chain of command and sent staff studies supporting the elongated wall to First Army. John Keene, as a disinterested third party recommended through national command, was a possible way to break the deadlock.
Keene looked at the map again and walked under the Martin Agency building into the circle at one hundred Schockoe Slip. Mueller had never been this way and had gotten slightly turned around but it only took a moment for him to reorient himself when he saw the Richbrau microbrewery. It had been a long day and he was trying to figure out a way to subtly suggest that maybe it was Miller time, when Keene finally responded, «I'm thinking of Diess.»
«So am I,» remarked Mueller, following his own thought process, «it sure is warm for October.» In fact the weather had been unseasonably cool, but he was about to continue in the vein that a cold Ole Nick would go down a treat when he realized that Keene had gone almost catatonic in thought. He waited for him to go on. «Is this when I'm supposed to prompt you,» he finally prompted, «or when I'm supposed to shut up and wait?»
Keene looked at the fountain in the middle of the circle without replying and muttered, «Captain Morgan, I am really sorry for what we are going to do to you.» Then turning back to Mueller he thumbed across the street. «Time for a cold one, Sergeant.»
Once they were seated in the dimness of the microbrewery, having dodged the various street people between themselves and their goal, Keene became abruptly animated.
«Okay,» he said taking a sip of the tasty malt and stabbing the map, «how do you kill Posleen?»
«Well, apparently they've ruled out poison gas,» Mueller joked, «so I guess that leaves artillery.»
«Right, and what is the problem with killing them with artillery?»
«I don't know.» Mueller waited for Keene to go on but realized that the engineer was really testing him. «Forward observers I suppose. Seeing them while staying alive yourself,» he finally answered testily. He'd had more than enough personal experience with how hard they were to kill.
«In part. And that if you don't contain them, physically, they both do more damage and have the option to figure out how to get to your forces. The best thing is to keep them at arms' reach. Failing that, to have them contained where you have superior terrain advantage, man-made or natural. With me so far?»
«Yep.»
«Okee-dokee. On Diess, once the humans got their shit together, they formed the boulevards into tremendous killing grounds. In Tennessee we were doing the same thing with walls and even some tunnels. Lead them by the nose, then corral them and pound them with machine guns, manjacks and artillery.»
«Never work here,» countered Mueller. He was familiar with the Diess operation where the Third Corps commander had built walls along the boulevards and slaughtered the Posleen. The differences in cities were marked. «The skyscrapers are too flimsy, the distances are shorter and the city engineer would have a cow. Then the governor, who is a buddy of the city engineer and the Twenty-Ninth ID commander and, for that matter, the President, would have a cow.»