“Connect,” he said. “O’Neal.”
“General O’Neal, this is a disaster,” the admiral said without preamble. “Seven SheVa tanks destroyed and over a hundred ACS suits permanently out of commission!”
Mike noted for the future that the admiral had put it in terms of materials, not the hundred plus dead and scores of wounded. Fleet could care less about casualties; soldiers and sailors were scum and more than disposable. His jaw worked for a moment as he imagined strangling the fat little prick. One of these days he was going to get into a position to screw all the brass in Fleet, and about half the brass in Fleet Strike, extremely hard. And when he did they were going to feel the screwing.
“Actually, admiral, this is a battle,” Mike replied. “A destroyer moronically bumbling into ground fire it knew was there, on the other hand, is a disaster. When you find an infection you have to cut it out. This one is just particularly deep and hard.”
“I have arranged a conference call in fifteen minutes,” the admiral said, angrily. “You will be there.”
“I’m in the middle of a murthering great battle, admiral,” Mike snarled. “You have got to be fucking shitting me.”
“The Darhel Ceel will be included. You will be there.”
“Holy fuck,” Mike muttered as the admiral cut the connection. He slid his dip over to the far side of his mouth then back then spat it out into the underlayer. “Raw, anything deadly about to happen?”
“We’ve got security both ways,” the sergeant said, nervously. “Why?”
Mike popped his helmet and took a breath. The O2 sensors had said there was enough oxygen and while carbon dioxide, monoxide and various trace poisons were high, the air was breathable. He didn’t take a big deep breath, though, because it was only barely breathable. What he did get was filled with the incredibly noxious smell of roasted Posleen. Posleen could eat humans but that didn’t mean they had terrestrial body chemistry, just a very bizarre one. And when it got cooked it smelled like a burning chemical factory. When it decayed it smelled worse.
He spit the last bits of chewed-out dip into his helmet, the underlayer gleaning it happily, then pulled out a can of Skoal. There was underlayer gel still coating his head. Once upon a time it would have been crawling back into the helmet but these days it had gotten smart enough to know he was going to put the helmet back on as soon as he had a fresh dip. It stayed away from his face, though, giving him the appearance of wearing a silvery, rippling skull-cap.
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?”
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