Issue In Doubt

CHAPTER Six

Supreme Military Headquarters, Bellevue, Sarpy County, Federal Zone, North American Union



The Joint Chiefs of Staff assembled VII Corps (reinforced) for the Troy mission, dubbed Operation Menelaus, and assigned Lieutenant General Joel H. Lyman to command it. The main body of the corps consisted of four Army divisions: combined infantry, armor, artillery, and air. The “reinforced” part was the First Marine Combat Force, which consisted of the First Marine Division, Second Marine Air Wing, and supporting elements. The First MCF’s commander was Lieutenant General Harold W. Bauer. The Marines were there to “kick in the door,” as such assaults are called, with the Army to follow close behind to do the bulk of whatever fighting there might be. The Navy’s transport vessels, designated Amphibious Ready Group 17, were to be escorted by the warships of Task Force 8, under the command of Rear Admiral James Avery. TF8 was built around two carriers, one with four atmospheric combat and support squadrons, and two space fighter squadrons, the other a fast attack carrier with two space fighter squadrons. Ten other warships; two cruisers, five destroyers, and three frigates provided the task force’s major firepower.

While the entire force was in space, Rear Admiral Avery was in command. Planetside, Lieutenant General Bauer was in command until VII Corps landed, at which time Lieutenant General Lyman would assume overall ground and air command.

Considering what the Monticello had found, or more importantly not found, in the vicinity of Troy, and what the Force Recon Marines had encountered planetside, the combined force was considered to be more than sufficient to deal with whatever might be there, the monstrously large ship that carried the original alien invasion force not withstanding. After all, the Monticello hadn’t seen that ship.

It was possible to covertly assign units to Operation Menelaus, but impossible to assemble and send off that large a force in secret. So as soon as the order to begin assembling the task force elements was issued, President Mills initiated a conference call to his counterparts in the European Union, the South Asian Cooperative, Greater Eurasia, Pacific America, the East Asian Cooperation Sphere, and Man-Home Origin. The first two because, along with the NAU, they were the richest, most powerful supra-nationals; the third because its major component was Russia, a historic trouble-maker that always needed to be appeased; the latter three because they were the locations of three of the four space elevators, all of which would be needed to lift the entire task force into orbit. Simultaneously, the Secretaries of State and War paid personal visits to the capitals of the supra-nationals with the space elevators.

Austro-Pacifica, the Caliphate, and the Junta were considered irrelevant to the current situation, and formal notification of their leadership could wait.

There rose, of course, a furor, with the loudest voices sounding off from Moscow.

Then the dickering started. Pacific America, the East Asian Cooperation Sphere, and Man-Home Origin naturally understood the necessity of the NAU using all of the elevators to put their force in orbit. Just as naturally, they each saw an opportunity to make a massive profit. Accordingly, they almost instantly demanded quadruple their normal fees for use of their elevators. The elevator located on Jarvis Island just below the equator in the mid-Pacific was the only one that didn’t require negotiation: the island had been a territory of the old United States of America before the founding of the North American Union, and remained an NAU territory.

It took nearly two weeks of hard negotiating, but everybody eventually settled for double the normal fees. Both the European Union and the South Asian Cooperative felt it was in their interest to aid the NAU in paying the higher fees. After all, whoever those aliens were, they probably had EU or SAC colonies in their sights—possibly even Earth.

Greater Eurasia broke the news publicly, so President Mills hastily convened a press conference to inform the world at large of what was known about the invasion, and what the NAU was doing about it.

Austro-Pacifica, the Caliphate, and the Junta were considerably put off by not having been notified earlier. But they got over it. Then everybody settled back to watch developments.

Military staffs require constant work. If they aren’t planning or running an actual mission, they are making contingency plans. So after standing up the VII Corps (reinforced), the Joint Chiefs’ staff began planning to stand up the Second Army, which would be the largest military force to be assembled under one commander in centuries. Second Army would consist of four Army corps, each with three combined arms divisions. Two Marine Combat Forces were designated to fill out the Second Army. In addition to transport ships, the Navy would provide a battle group with three carriers, each with four atmospheric combat squadrons and two space combat squadrons; a mix of thirty combat ships; cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and—perhaps most important—three dreadnoughts. The Navy didn’t have enough transport shipping to carry Second Army with all of its heavy weapons, and other equipment and supplies, so they assumed that they’d have to commandeer a full quarter, perhaps more, of the NAU’s civilian space fleets. Not an eventuality anybody looked forward to.

They issued a training order: Stand up the Third Marine Combat Force and XII Corps. After all, there was a possibility, no matter how remote, that the VII Corps (Rein) might run into more than it could handle on its own. Together, the Third MCF and XII Corps would form the core of Second Army.

Second-level navy staffers began back channel negotiations with their counterparts in the major supra-nationals that had navies to possibly enlist their aid in transporting a larger force should it prove to be necessary. All hypothetically, of course.



Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, North American Union



The Marines of the First Marine Division, the ground combat element of the First Marine Combat Force, were resplendent in their dress blues as they marched, battalion by battalion, onto the parade ground and formed into three infantry regiments, each with three independent battalions; a light armored infantry regiment; an artillery regiment with three medium gun battalions and one heavy; another regiment included three armored amphibious battalions, one armored, one reconnaissance, and the division’s headquarters battalion. The division band followed, its drummers beating a tattoo as the regiments and battalions marched in. Twenty-two thousand, five hundred and seventy-five Marines in all. All were armed save the musicians; most with rifles carried at right shoulder arms, the others with sidearms holstered on their belts. As each battalion reached its designated position in the formation, their commanding officers called out, “Order, arms!” and as one, the rifles flashed off the Marines’ shoulders to be positioned alongside their right trouser seams. Sunlight glinted off the brass of the Marines’ buttons and emblems. The splashes of color on the left chest of their stock-collared jackets were the ribbons that told a Marine’s history.

Major General Hugh Purvis, the division’s commanding general, stepped onto the reviewing stand and stopped front and center to face his Marines. He took a moment to look them over. More than a quarter of them had no decoration on their uniform jackets other than rank insignia and marksmanship badges. Half or more of the Marines had one or more medals; the Good Conduct Medal, perhaps one or two deployment medals, indicating whatever peacekeeping or humanitarian aid deployments they’d been on. Fewer than a quarter of them had the expeditionary or campaign medals that showed they’d gone in harm’s way. Not all of those wore the Combat Action Ribbon on their right chests, to demonstrate that they’d come under enemy fire. Fewer than one in ten of the Marines who’d gone in harm’s way wore the decorations awarded for heroism in the face of the enemy.

Internally, Purvis sighed. Not one in five of his Marines had looked into the mouth of the cat. He and his officers and senior NCOs had done their best to train the Marines. But had they done enough? Finished scanning his division, Purvis looked directly at the division chief-of-staff, Brigadier General James Dougherty, who stood on the parade ground before the reviewing stand.

Dougherty raised his right hand to the gleaming black bill of his barracks cover. “Sir,” his amplified voice boomed out loudly enough to be heard even in the rear ranks of the division, “First Marine Division, all present and accounted for!”

Purvis brought his right hand up sharply in salute, held it for a beat, and cut sharply. Dougherty cut his, then marched to the side of the reviewing stand and mounted it to stand to the left and rear of his commander.

“Marines!” Purvis said, his amplified voice easily reaching everyone in the formation before him. “You have heard on the news, a colony world allied with the North American Union has been attacked.” He paused a beat, then continued. “It’s true. And it is true that the attackers were an alien sentience—that is, not human. It’s also true that it appears that the entire population of Semi-Autonomous World Troy has been killed or taken prisoner. All attempts to contact the authorities, or anybody else, on Troy since the initial alert of an attack have met with failure. We do not know who attacked Troy, or in what force. Nor do we know the strength of any force presently occupying the planet.

“The First Marine Division has been selected to establish a planethead on Troy, to kick in the door to allow the Army to land and retake the planet. We will be supported in this endeavor by the First Combat Support Brigade, and, once we secure space for their operations, the Second Marine Air Wing will fly cover for us.

“We will take this planethead against a foe of unknown strength, with unknown defensive capabilities. We are Marines. We will do it. No enemy has ever successfully withstood us when we attempted to establish a beachhead—or planethead.

“When you return to your barracks, you will be briefed on everything we know about the alien enemy. We are going to respond with full force, and defeat them.

“We begin embarking on Navy shipping in three days.

“We are Marines! We always win. Semper Fi!”

As one, the men and women of the First Marine Division roared out, “Ooh-rah!”

As the last echoes finished reverberating across the parade ground, he said, “That is all.”

Dougherty stepped forward and called out, “Pass in review!”

The division band began playing, its drums, brasses, and skirting bagpipes sounding the chords of The Marine Corps Hymn. Battalion by battalion, the 22,575 Marines raised their rifles to right shoulder arms, columned to the right, marched to the end of the parade ground, turned left and left again, to pass before the reviewing stand, their arms and legs flashing metronomically.



Fort Bragg, North Carolina, North American Union



Lieutenant General Joel H. Lyman’s chest swelled with pride as he watched the VII Corps assemble. His VII Corps! Four divisions strong; the 2nd, the 9th, the 25th, and the 106th. Three of the divisions each had three brigades, the 25th Division had four. Each brigade had one infantry battalion, leg or mounted, one armored battalion, heavy or light, and an artillery battalion. One brigade in each division had a fourth battalion, three of the extra battalions were aviation, the fourth was rocket. And there were the brigades directly under the Corps: engineers, signals, Rangers, military police, and medical. Eighty-five thousand soldiers, his to lead into combat.

Lyman had great confidence in his troops. He knew that he, his generals, their officers and senior noncoms had done an exemplary job of training the soldiers of the VII Corps. He and his corps were ready to take on and defeat anybody who dared oppose them!

He watched his eighty-five thousand soldiers take to the parade ground in their camouflaged war dress. The camouflage pattern was designed to trick the eye into not making out details, or even forms. As he looked out over his corps, except for the faces, he was unable to distinguish individual soldiers; the camouflage pattern blurred them together. Indeed, at the farther edges of the mass formation, the soldiers effectively disappeared from his sight—save for their bare faces.

“Soldiers!” Lyman said in a firm voice, picked up by repeating amplifiers so that every soldier could hear it no matter where in the formation he stood, and never boomed out. “Your time for training is over, now it is time to put your training to work in war. You’ve heard by now that Troy has been invaded by aliens! We don’t know who these aliens are, where they came from, or why they attacked without warning. But that lack of knowledge won’t stop us, won’t slow us down in our mission to kick them off a human world, and teach them that when they decided to tangle with h. sapiens, they bit off more than they can chew!

“You, the officers and men of the VII Corps, are beyond doubt the best led, best trained, most prepared, and best armed military force in history. You are going to perform splendidly, and wipe those aliens off all human worlds!

“When you are dismissed, you will spend the next week learning everything we know about the aliens, what they’ve done, and how we are going to deal with them when we reach Troy.” He paused and, with a chuckle, added, “The Marines are going in first, to be our doormen.”

Then more firmly, almost solemnly, “That is all.”

Battalion by battalion, regiment by regiment, division by division, with the division and brigade bands playing When the Caissons Go Rolling Along, the soldiers of VII Corps passed in review. Lieutenant General Lyman saluted each division’s, each regiment’s, each independent battalion’s colors as it passed in front of the reviewing stand.