Stark's Command (8 page)

"Why don't you? You seem attracted to hopeless causes." He left her laughing again, heading back to headquarters, not stopping until he reached his room again. Stark sat carefully before the terminal, bracing himself, knowing he'd put off one last task for too long already, then activated his comm unit. "Corporal Gomez."

The reply came after a few moments, thin but steady.
"Sí, Sargento."
She looked like hell, face pale and drawn, but tried to draw herself as erect as possible.

"Relax, Anita. How you doin'?"

Her body drooped very slightly. "Okay. Pretty tough battle, huh, Sarge?"

"I've been in a lot easier ones. You did one helluva job. Damn good."

Color flooded back into her face as Corporal Gomez flushed.
"Gracias, Sargento."

Stark hesitated before speaking again. "How many did we lose, Anita?"

It took a moment for her reply. "Kidd. She fought real good, but there was just too many targeting her. Hit six, seven times. Hoxely. Got a big hole blown in his chest. And Maseru. Too green, that kid, he made one mistake too many. Not his fault, I guess. Didn't have time to learn the ropes."

Three dead. Surprisingly few. "That's it?"

"Dead, yeah. Then there's wounded. Just about everybody got beat up some. The worst ones, well, Billings took a hit in the shoulder that broke everything all to hell. The docs are building her a new shoulder joint and stuff. Chen got another round in his hip. He must have a target painted on there."

"What about Murphy? He was down . . ."

"Oh, yeah." Her eyes widened. "Man, I'm really wasted, I guess, to forget him. Murphy, he lost an arm."

"An arm?" Not dead after all. But—"He lost a whole arm?"

Gomez nodded. "Yeah. Don't know for sure what hit him, maybe he got in the way of a bunker-buster. Blew away everything up to the shoulder, and some of that, too, I guess, and filled his side with shrapnel."

"How the hell did he survive that?"

Gomez's tight grin spoke more of remembered tension than of humor. "Real lucky guy. Somebody was close enough to him to slap one of them economy-size battle bandages on the wound. You know, the ones that clot the blood automatic. That sorta sealed the big hole in the suit, too, long enough to get Murphy into a survival bag. Still don't know how he lived long enough to be stabilized, but he's tough, eh,
Sargento?"

"Yeah, he's tough," Stark agreed, knowing that he was probably talking to the "somebody" who'd saved Murphy.

"They can grow him a new one, right? A new arm? We got that up here?"

"Yeah. Either the mil docs or the civs can handle it. I'll make sure they do."

"Good. Murphy was worried about that." She grinned again. "While he was being medevac'd I told him, 'Murphy, you're damn lucky that Sarge ain't here, 'cause if he was, he'd tell you too bad you lost that arm instead of your head, since sometimes you use that arm.' "

Stark laughed, too, unable to hold it back. "Anita, you are one hard-ass bitch."

Her grin widened.
"Gracias, Sargento."

"Take it easy, all of you. Get all the rest you need."

"Don't got no choice. The docs, they wanted to stick us all in medical, but they're still full up with more serious wounded so they had to confine us to our bunks. Pretty good, huh? Getting ordered to stay in bed all day."

"Enjoy it. I doubt it'll ever happen again." The connection ended, Stark palmed the lights off again, but this time he lay on the bunk, closing his eyes to sleep, trying not to see the faces of Kidd, Hoxely, and Maseru.

He was still nursing a cup of coffee the next morning in the nearest rec room when Vic came in and plopped down at the same table. "Good morning, sunshine."

"Likewise."

"What you been up to this morning?"

"Working out." Stark rolled stiff shoulders, wincing. "Haven't done a resistance workout in way too long."

Vic drew herself a cup of coffee, smiling archly. "We've been busy."

"I know. I also know what'll happen to my muscles if I drop off the daily workout routine for any length of time. Speaking of which, when was your last workout?"

"You got me. Right before we enjoyed front-row seats for the death of Third Division." She nodded several times at Stark's expression. "I'll get back in the routine. Cross my heart. You don't have to look so disgusted."

"I'm not disgusted by you. It's this coffee. With all the luxuries here at headquarters, I always figured the officers also had good coffee. Boy, was I wrong. How come I've never found a decent cup of coffee in the mil?"

"I think there's a regulation against it." Vic sipped her own cup. "Ugh. This is worse than the stuff we get. Okay, Ethan, we got some issues to talk about."

"We've got about a million issues to talk about. Which ones in particular do you mean?"

"Officers."

Stark winced again. "Vic, we haven't had time to work out how to get them back to Earth. As soon as—"

"That's not what I meant. We need new ones. Some of the acting commanders are okay, some aren't. We need to appoint officers, and the only place we're going to find them is from the enlisted ranks." She glanced around until her eyes focused on the terminal imbedded in the wall nearby. "I knew there had to be one of these in here. Look. This is the table of organization for our division. How are we ever going to locate enough enlisted good enough to fill all these officer positions?"

"We won't, and we don't need to. You told me, remember? There's too many officers. So we only need to fill the positions we, uh, need to fill."

"Elegantly expressed, Ethan," Reynolds noted with a smile. "Good point. Still, that leaves a lot of job openings."

"What's wrong with the people holding those jobs now?"

"You're kidding, right? There's nothing wrong with some of them. But some of the others are way out of their depth. Others can handle the job but don't want it."

"Tough." Stark leaned back, pitching his empty cup expertly into the recycling chute. "My heart bleeds for them. Nobody better complain to me about having to do a job they don't want. I know all about it."

"Then," Vic continued, "there's the ones who just don't belong in their positions."

"Like who?"

"Like Kalnick."

"Oh, yeah." Stark scowled.
Unfinished business. Gotta deal with that, and soon.
"Okay, you've made your point. But how do we turn Sergeants, Corporals, and Privates into Colonels, Majors, and Captains?"

"There's on-the-job experience," Vic pointed out, "like we had yesterday."

"I'm not sure I could take many more experiences like that. And since I don't intend launching any offensive actions, there ain't gonna be a lot of opportunity for people to learn that side of the job in the field."

"Agreed. So we need to set up a training program."

"A training program? What kind of training?"

She shrugged. "Large unit command and control, I guess. We'll have to depend on the simulators up here to teach maneuvering large units. Once we get the sims fixed, that is."

"Fixed? What's wrong with 'em?"

"Nothing if you prefer fairy tales to reality."

Stark frowned. "I thought they were supposed to have the latest and greatest combat sims up here."

"Nah. These are pretty damn good, but the latest and greatest never goes to the front lines. It always ends up in the Pentagon or somewhere else in the rear. You want to know what's wrong with the sims?" Vic leaned to trigger the display again. "You can access them from here." The display sprang to multicolored life, cluttered symbology marking American and enemy positions. "This look familiar?"

"Yeah." Stark fought down a shudder. "That's what things looked like just before Meecham sent Third Division forward."

"Very good. This is the sim they ran to, if you'll pardon the term, 'test' Meecham's plan. Watch." She activated the sim, letting Stark watch as the initial brigade assault began.

Stark shut his eyes, trying to block out memories of futile slaughter. "Vic, I don't think I can watch this."

"This is the sim, Ethan. Look."

It took a lot of effort, but Stark forced his eyes open again, then almost immediately furrowed his brow. "This shows the enemy, too?"

"Uh-huh."

"How come those units in their rear are jittering back and forth instead of heading to counter our attack?"

"Because," Vic explained patiently, "Meecham's theories said they'd be confused by our little diversionary actions. Remember those? So the enemy, in the sim, can't decide where to commit its troops."

Stark snorted in derision. "Hey, there's a lot of enemy positions missing. Meecham's plan needed that to work, too, right?" As Vic nodded, Stark pointed at the symbols marking the advancing American brigade. "Look at that! They're maintaining perfect formation! That's ridiculous. Those soldiers were incapable of that up here."

"They had to be able to maintain perfect formation for Meecham's plan," Vic reminded him. "Ethan, I talked to the ape geeks who run the sims. Their orders are always to make the plan work, so they program the sim so the plan works. Get it?"

On the display, only scattered enemy fire met the American charge, then enemy units began falling away, retreating in ironic mimicry of the recent disaster Stark had narrowly avoided. "No. I don't get it. These sims are supposed to be so good they show exactly what would happen in the real world."

"Uh-uh," Vic chided, wagging one finger at him. "Not the 'real world,' Ethan. Whatever world needs to exist to make the plan work. See? To make Meecham's plan work, the enemy needs to react just the way his theory says they have to. Our forces have to perform just the way he needs them to, regardless of things like terrain and training. And when push comes to shove, the enemy has to be overwhelmed by the force of our . . . what'd they call it, our clustered paradigms?"

"Somethin' like that." Stark shook his head, jaw slack. "I don't believe it. Those damn Generals really did think they were gods. If the world don't match the plans, you change the world to fit."

"Right. Then you declare the plans good because, hell, you ran them on a state-of-the-art simulator, right?"

Stark rubbed his palms into his eyes. "Then the sims have always been run like that? That's why so many real-world ops went to hell even after they'd supposedly been sim'd to death?"

"I expect. Most people figured the sims were being run to get real answers. Instead, they've been designed to produce whatever answers the guys in charge wanted to get."

"Why didn't we hear anything about this?" Stark ground out. "Those ape geeks are enlisted. How come they never passed word around?"

"Security, Ethan. Everything about the sim designs has been slapped with high-level, compartmented security protection. The ape geeks were subject to the highest levels of security screening so they couldn't breathe a word to anyone for fear of flunking the screens. That was supposedly so the enemy wouldn't learn anything about us from the sims. I guess it was also to keep
us
from learning about the sims."

"Nothing like security rules to cover up mistakes, arrogance, and just plain stupidity," Stark agreed sourly. "Okay, but the sim guys can fix this junk? Program sims so that they reflect the real world?"

Vic hesitated. "They say so."

"But you don't think so. Why not?"

"Because I've been thinking about it, and I'm not sure we can ever make a sim do what's advertised." Vic leaned back, apparently watching the sim unroll as the virtually unscathed simulated American troops continued to simulate triumph in every direction. "Take terrain. You ever walk someplace where the map exactly matched the ground?"

"Hell, no. There's always differences. Even up here where nothing's supposed to change and the whole surface is supposed to be digitized to hell and gone. There's always a rock where one ain't supposed to be, or no rock where the map says there is one."

"Right. The Rock Gremlins." Stark laughed at her reference to the mythical creatures that altered terrain every time an allegedly definitive map had been produced. Since senior officers always insisted the maps had to be right, the enlisted joked that there had to be something moving rocks, hills, trees, buildings, and bodies of water around after the maps had been created. "So even terrain in a sim can't be exactly right," Vic continued. "What about fuzzier stuff, stuff you can't just scan from orbit and digitize? You know, how well a weapon works, how fast a soldier will move, how much ammo they'll need, how often they'll hit what they aim at. And that's fuzzy enough for our side. Now think about trying to input that data for the enemy. What the hell's so precise about any of it?"

Stark thought about it. "Not much. You're saying a sim's just a bunch of guesstimates being run against other guesstimates, right?"

"Exactly. Guesstimates precise to the tenth decimal point, but they're still guesstimates. Even when you're trying your damnedest to make it reflect some impartial reality, which apparently doesn't happen all that much."

"Huh. I guess that's why the fantasy games some of the troops play seem just as real as the sims."

"Yeah. As far as the computers are concerned, they're the same thing."

"Great. So the sims aren't a magic bullet, even if we do our best to make them realistic. How else can we teach our people to be officers?"

Vic canted her head to indicate her terminal. "I've been browsing around a little. There's a whole mess of Staff Education Courses in the files. I guess officers were supposed to do them in their free time."

"Staff Education Courses? SECs?" Stark pronounced the acronym as one word in standard military fashion. "Who thought up that name for the courses?"

"I wouldn't care to guess, but I'd bet somebody suggested it as a joke, and when some Generals liked it, everybody was afraid to tell them."

"So what kind of SECs did our officers enjoy?"

"Ethan, behave. Look. Here's one on
Effective Battle Management."

"You're kidding." Stark leaned to look closer, twisting his face skeptically as he did so. "How the hell do you 'manage' a battle? I always thought they were too big a mess for managing."