When the Devil Dances

“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.”