John Ringo - When the Devil Dances

“Roger, SheVa Nine,” said the other voice. “I’m sending the situation up to Eastern; pending their override we’re changing our mission to SheVa support. Just do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t blow the fuck up, okay?”

“Mrs. President, it is not a question of ‘will you’ release the nuclear weapons,” Horner said calmly. His calm wasn’t fooling anyone, though; he was smiling like a tiger. “It is simply a question of when you will release them. As Major O’Neal pointed out, you have a valid request from a Fleet officer; you are required by treaty to abide by that request.”

“That is arguable, General,” the National Security Advisor said. She was colocated with the President, but there were four others in the video conference, and each would be expected to find something to say. Valid or not. “We are required to fulfill any military request for which we have the materials to supply; however, nuclear weapons release are traditionally a political request, not a military one. Ergo, it is not necessarily a requirement for us to fulfill it.”

“And I have to question the validity,” the High Commander said. The former Fifth Army commander had been promoted to replace General Taylor and was still feeling the limits of his authority. Unquestionably, the Continental Army commander was his subordinate; on the other hand, the reason that most people felt that Horner hadn’t been promoted to High Commander was that no one dared remove him as CONARC. Fifth Army, on the other hand, for all practical purposes had ceased to exist so the former commander was flapping around at loose ends.

“Major O’Neal is requiring a cold LZ. Very well, let them land outside the Posleen area and assault down from Black Rock mountain. I mean, that’s how an air assault is supposed to go; you don’t land right on the objective for God’s sake!”

“And we have to consider the overall effects, Mrs. President,” the communications director cut in. “We have a redistricting battle going on nationwide; it’s probably not a good idea to give the appearance of panic. If it appears that you’re losing in the southeast, and it will if you authorize nuclear release, people will shift towards the other party… And, besides, they’re caught in the mountains; surely conventional forces can handle them there.”

“Right,” Horner snarled. “That’s it. First of all, it wasn’t a request, it was an order. And a valid one. You can try to parse that, but I guarantee you it falls under the letter of the treaty and the Darhel will well and truly cut your legs out from under you if you try to parse it any other way. That assumes that any of us are around to discuss it with them because if we don’t stop this incursion we are all going to be HORSE CHOW.

“Furthermore, Major O’Neal is perfectly correct. There is no way to take the Gap without the Posleen being cleared out. And the only system that conceivably could do it would be using ICBM fire from the upper Midwest.

“I’m so glad that your communications director, with her degree in law from Stanford, is such a military expert! Perhaps she can tell me how I’m supposed to stop the Posleen, who are using airmobile tactics and pouring a hundred thousand troops an hour through the Gap? I have one, repeat, ONE division available to contain them and it will have to cover multiple exits from the zone. Furthermore, they appear to be planning on running up and down the Line, opening up passes. I have no units, except for the occasional Four-F militiaman, to stop them from doing that! It’s not just Georgia that is having problems; we have over fifty thousand Posleen in the Shenandoah sitting on three half finished SheVas. Perhaps she could tell me what I’m supposed to do about that? If she cannot then I suggest that she SHUT THE HELL UP. This is not a political crisis, this is a NIGHTMARE! And the sooner that you all come to understand that this is not maybe losing a city or maybe losing a division, but MAYBE LOSING THE WAR the quicker we can get done.

“There are times when the proper weapon to use is a nuke. You need to come to grips with that, Madame President. We need to use nukes, not want to use them, need to use them. We should have used them at Rochester and at second Roanoke; it would have considerably reduced the casualties that were inflicted on us. By not using them you probably caused me to lose a division of additional casualties. But now we have to use them; the choice is that or die. Welcome to the wall.

“This… political squeamishness has to stop and it has to stop right now! We have one battalion of ACS left available and they are the only unit that can perform the mission and they will evaporate in a second if they don’t have a big hole to drop into. And that means using nukes. I am not going to piss those ACS away. We will use nukes in the initial assault and we will be on call with nuclear suppport until the Posleen are pushed back through the Gap. And if you have a problem with that, you can have my god damned stars right NOW .”

As the High Commander opened his mouth to respond hotly the President raised her hand.

“Is it really that bad?” she asked.

“Madame President,” the High Commander said, “there is no need…”

“Stop,” she said, holding up her hand again. “I asked the question of General Horner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the general replied. “It’s really that bad. After the Gap there are multiple routes open. Some of them, most of them, are pretty nasty, but there isn’t much to block them with. It’s… complicated, but I can’t get enough forces to all the paths they will probably take to stop the… flow of them. There are too many exits from the Gap. They are able to turn towards the west and open up the 129 route and that will cascade forces onto Chattanooga. And they have enough… force-flow to also head for Knoxville and Asheville. I can’t bottle up all of those forces with what’s in the area; it’s gotten drawn down to help all the other emergencies that have occurred. And now they’re also starting a full court press up and down the Appalachians: There’s just not enough forces to handle all of that and the forces in the Gap. I have to… bottle them up until I can get forces into the area to push them back.

“I have to stop the flow before enough get through to take Asheville or Chattanooga from behind; Madame President, there are three Sub-Urbs between the Gap and Asheville comprising fourteen million people total. And if Asheville falls we might as well all learn to speak Canadian.”

“You can’t stop them with nukes,” the High Commander argued. “There are too many Posleen. It’s not physically possible to ‘glaze the eastern seaboard’ even if we could survive it politically or environmentally.”

“I don’t intend to,” Horner answered coldly. “As you would have noted if you had listened. I intend to open up a hole and drop Mike O’Neal in it to plug it. I’d also like to open up their use at other key points.”

“Hold on a moment, General Horner,” the President said. “I’d like everyone to drop out of this circuit and Mrs. Norris and Ms. Shramm need to leave the room.”

She waited as the others reluctantly left the circuit then turned back to the image of the distant general. “General Horner, the Chinese fired over two thousand nuclear weapons and poisoned the valley of the Yangtze for the next ten thousand years. You propose to do much the same to the Tennessee Valley, you understand that? And they still lost . That is the greatest part of the problem, the very real political and more importantly morale problem. Nukes, now, are considered to be the last desperate weapon of someone who is losing . Who, in effect, has already lost. That is the real reason that I have prevented their use; the image of them being the desperation weapon. Is it worth the… social damage that will occur? Is it worth the physical damage; the Tennessee drains into the Mississippi. For that matter, it is the water source for the entire lower defense line and it will be poisoned by dropping nukes into that valley.”