John Ringo - Eye of the Storm

He tamped down the can, and nothing could tamp down a can of Skoal like an ACS suit, then pulled out a dip and stuck it between his cheek and gums. The task was as automatic and precise as killing Posleen. Despite the fact that he was dipping with relatively inflexible armored gauntlets not one scrap hit the floor. He was over eighty years old with the body of a twenty year-old; unthought actions were so precise they were machine-like.

He slid the helmet back on, put away the can and then pinged Sergeant Rawls.

“I have to do a conference in fifteen minutes. Secure this area totally. Get all available units into this corridor and hold it. Press forward as much as you need to to feel secure then hold that. I’ll tell you when I’m done.”

The chosen virtual venue was a conference room aboard the cruiser Kagamuska . Some of the people at the conference might have been present. It was Admiral Suntoro’s flagship so it made sense if he was really there. And the Darhel Ceel Banash was staying onboard as well.

But it was impossible to tell. At least to Mike’s eyes, viewing from inside an opaque helmet a fifty meters underground on the other side of the world from the cruiser, which was in high orbit.

Admiral Suntoro, the Ceel, Commodore Ajeet, moronic commander of the destroyer task force and Captain Patrick Vorassi, senior commander of the two massive troop ships that had transported the ACS to the dirtball were all “present.” As well as one pissed off general.

Mike had chosen to present a virtual “self” in armor, sans scary gargoyle helmet. When he bipped in the meeting was apparently already in full swing.

“At least two months to get them here… ” Captain Vorassi said. Technically Fleet, he spent most of his time transporting Fleet Strike units, both ACS and regular line infantry.

“The cost of this operation has, hower, become prohibitive,” the Darhel Ceel replied, calmly. “Further losses are unjustified when there is a reasonable alternative.”

“Ah, General O’Neal,” Admiral Suntoro said, giving Mike an oily smile as if they hadn’t just been at loggerheads. “We were discussing an interesting suggestion that Darhel Ceel Banash has presented.”

“Cool,” Mike said. “You guys have some trick for taking tunnels? Because so far it’s looking like brute force is the best choice.”

“In fact, no,” the Darhel said from inside his concealing cowl. Mike had met Darhel before, without their cowls, and knew full well that what was under the hood was a fox-like head with a muzzle full of razor-sharp, shark-like teeth. He wasn’t sure how the Darhel ever got around to “we’ll ne’er study war no more” but it must have been a hell of a stretch. “Unfortunately, that appears to be the necessity. However, now that the ACS has… heroically secured the tunnel entrances, it is perhaps time to call in a… less valuable unit.”

“The Ceel suggests that we let the mopping up be performed by the Legion,” Admiral Suntoro said. “I think that’s a very valuable suggestion, don’t you, General?”

Shortly after the siege of Earth was lifted, the venerable Legion Etrangère had been disbanded. Well, the few survivors had been disbanded. Most of them joined other units and continued the fight. However, shortly after that a “new” unit, copying much of the Legion’s methods and even some of its honors, was stood up. The Federation Legion, however, was not the Foreign Legion of yore. While the Legion had, often, been a dumping ground for ne’er-do-wells of one sort or another, the Federation Legion enshrined that. The thinking was simple and very, very old. Soldiers are bad. Quite often more demonstrably so. Murderers, drunks, drug addicts, dealers, thieves, rapists. You’ve spent money training them. Why throw all that money to waste?

And so the Federation Legion was born. A penal unit, part of Fleet and not Fleet Strike, it was used for every crap job the Fleet had. Mostly it spent its time on really horrible worlds during the mop-up phase of Posleen clearing. Occasionally, it was used in “hard clear” situations like this one. Casualty rates were horrendous and units had, within a few years, had over two hundred percent casualties. Most of those, admittedly, were in new arrivals. And, hell, many of them were when the veterans decided that a newbie simply wasn’t either criminal enough or good enough to want to have around.

The Legion was also light infantry. It had no heavy weapons, no armor and didn’t even use exos. It kept that Legion tradition: It mostly marched everywhere.

“With all due respect to the Ceel,” Mike said, oozing sweetness, “the answer is: No, I don’t think that’s a suggestion with any inherent value or merit. And that’s my professional opinion. Would you care for an expansion, Admiral?”

“Yes, please,” Admiral Suntoro snarled.

“Bullet point One, for those who need a PowerPoint presentation, is that the ACS has taken three percent casualties getting this far, and we’re finding resistance is on the same order as above ground. Legion is regular infantry; they’d get flipping slaughtered. I know they’re all drunks, thieves and murderers, but they weren’t given a death sentence or they’d already have been killed. Bullet Point Two: I would appreciate it if you didn’t kill the morale of my Corps. We took serious casualties getting to this point. We want to clear the damned mountains, kill a bunch of Posleen and take their stuff. That’s what my boys do and they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t enjoy it. Bullet Point Three: As the Captain said, getting them here would take at least two months. It is a simple military axiom that you should never give an enemy more time than necessary to prepare. I’ve sent orders to my division commanders to continue the assault but even this time is a poor use of my time. Letting them get even more settled in for two months, which is one Posleen birth cycle I remind you, is militarily insane. Bullet Point Four: I’ve got a Corps of armored combat suits pushing into this resistance. The Legion is about a division, max. The more you use, the fewer you lose. I doubt, professionally, that they have sufficient personnel to successfully assault this redoubt. In other words, they’ll fight until casualties exceed the level they’re willing to take and then mutiny. At which point my boys will be called in to quell the mutiny and we’ll be back to square one.

“So in my professional opinion, the Ceel’s suggestion, while appreciated, fails on the points that it is murderous, murderous to my Corps’ morale, unwise and unlikely to work. Are we done here? Because I’ve got a battle to run.”

“So you’re refusing to disengage?” Commodore Ajeet asked, incredulously. “But the Ceel’s suggestion… ”

“Is a suggestion,” Mike replied, coldly. “I am the ground force commander . That means I’m in command. If the Ceel would care to put in a request to have me relieved for someone more tractable he can feel free. In the meantime, I’ve got a battle to run. And you’re late on delivering the next shipment of power cells to Alpha Base. So I would suggest that we cut this meeting short so that everyone can go do their damned jobs. I, personally, am done here. Shelly, clear.”

“I’m sorry about that, Ceel Banash,” Admiral Suntoro said as soon as the conference had broken up. “General O’Neal should be more respectful of his betters.”

“General O’Neal’s record speaks for itself,” Ceel Banash said, calmly. “He is hyper-competent in his field. As was just proven. He was right , Admiral. I had considered only the point about how long it would take to get the Legion here. The other points were equally important if not more so. I have no issues with the conference.”