CHAPTER


TWENTY-NINE

Office of the G2, Confederation Army HQ, Bataan, Ravenette

Colonel Wilson Wyllyums sat with his feet up on his rickety field table, a Capricorn hanging out of one side of his mouth, contemplating his chances for promotion to brigadier general. They were zero, he reflected, and sighed. He’d retire a colonel, not because he wasn’t effective in his field, he was a top-notch intelligence officer, but because he just wasn’t a spit-and-polish soldier. Just then his tunic was hanging open and he was smoking. General Billie had issued specific directives there’d be no smoking in the Bataan fortress and officers and NCOs would be in the proper uniform at all times.

The no-smoking edict Wyllyums could understand. With so many men crammed into the fortress, the air was bad enough without tobacco smoke to foul the depleted oxygen supply. But General Billie smoked. He smoked foul-smelling Clintons. “Bastard,” Wyllyums muttered, thinking about that, as he did every time he lit a cigarette. “‘Do as I say, not as I do,’” he said aloud. “Rotten bastard,” he said again, inhaling deeply on his Capricorn.

The Hot Button on his console bleeped suddenly. The Hot Button was his direct line to General Billie’s office. Wyllyums cursed but continued smoking his cigarette. Each staff officer had such a line. If it bleeped more than two times before someone answered, the senior officer in that section would get an ass-chewing from General Billie. Wyllyums let the instrument bleep four times before he reached for it.

“Wyllyums? I need you, front and center!” a voice demanded.

Rage suddenly overcame Colonel Wilson Wyllyums’s caution and sense of self-preservation. It was the imperious tone of the voice on the other end of the communications system that did it. He was sick of it. “Who the fuck is this?” he shouted back.

The line was silent for all of six seconds. “This is General Billie” came the very slow, very deliberate answer.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir! Sorry. I didn’t recognize your voice, sir,” Wyllyums protested, grinning, feigning abject obedience and deep embarrassment, twirling his cigarette between his fingers. Good thing they didn’t have vid hookup.

Another long pause, then: “Please visit me as soon as possible, Colonel.” The line went dead.

“Yes, Master,” Wyllyums replied. He really didn’t care if it was dead or not. He shifted his feet to the floor. Well, what did the supreme commander want this time? Wyllyums knew he was in for another chewing out, for not answering the stupid line immediately, for insubordination, for being sloppy, for—for who knew what. But one curious thing: Billie had not roared at him as he usually did when issuing a summons.

Tunic unbuttoned, jaw unshaved, Colonel Wilson Wyllyums walked out of his tiny, smoke-filled cubicle. “Sergeant Craiggie,” he told his grizzled master sergeant, “I am off to see General Jeans of the Horse Marines.” That was his favorite sobriquet for General Billie, based on an old, old barrack ballad poking fun at useless officers.

“Very good, sir,” the sergeant replied, drawing himself to attention behind his desk while surreptitiously shoving the half-full bottle of Old Snort back into a drawer.

“If I am whores de combat, Sergeant,” Colonel Wyllyums said with dignified gravity, mimicking the First General Order. “Kindly take charge of this post and all government property in view.”

Sergeant Craiggie began to wonder if the colonel had been into his own supply of bourbon that morning. “Thy will be done, sir,” he replied, using his most gravelly Old NCO Voice.

Wyllyums and Craiggie had been together for years, on and off, and such banter was a ritual with them. “Oh”—Wyllyums made an airy gesture with one hand as he minced out of the tiny office—“don’t call me sir. Master will do just fine.”

Supreme Commander’s Office, Confederation Army HQ, Ravenette

“Ah, Wilson! Do have a seat,” General Billie greeted Colonel Wyllyums. The colonel stood there, mouth almost hanging open in astonishment. “Have a Clinton, Colonel?” Billie shoved the humidor across his desk.

“Uh, thank you, sir, but, no, thank you.” Wilson could not believe what was happening. Where was the ass-chewing he had expected—deserved, in fact?

Billie lit his own cigar. “Wilson, I’ve called you in here to get your opinion on something.” He leaned back and exhaled a blue cloud of smoke.

My opinion? Wilson thought. Now that was something new.

“But first, some good news.” Billie grinned. “I’m recommending you for the Legion of Merit. The adjutant general is cutting the orders even as we speak.”

What? Wyllyums sat bolt upright. Had he heard that right? “Ah, well, s-sir, that’s a great h-honor,” he stuttered. What’s going on here? he wondered. What does this guy want me to do? What’s the catch?

“Yes, Wilson, you deserve a decoration. For the way you discovered that seaborne invasion scheme the Coalition pulled on us a while ago—”

“But, sir, it was the—”

“And the job you’ve done finding and eliminating those antisatellite laser batteries. Excellent work, Colonel!”

Wyllyums could not believe what he was hearing. It was the Marine Force Recon that had discovered the seaborne attack force, and if it hadn’t been for Brigadier Sturgeon of Thirty-fourth FIST disobeying Billie’s orders to shift to the main line of defense, it would have succeeded. Wyllyums remembered distinctly General Billie’s rage against the Marine when he disobeyed Billie’s direct order and deployed his force to repel the attack. And it was Marine Force Reconnaissance that had been taking out the satellite-killer lasers. All Wyllyums did was track their progress in those operations and keep the army commanders informed of what they’d been doing.

“Good work, Wilson, I repeat. And a decoration is inadequate recognition for what you’ve done here.” Billie handed Wyllyums a crystal. “Pop this into your reader when you get back to your office. You’ll like what’s on it.”

Wilson regarded the crystal suspiciously. “Sir, I-I—”

“It’s your Officer Efficiency Report, Colonel, and in it I recommend your immediate promotion to the rank of brigadier general. I have the authority to grant you a temporary, field promotion as brevet rank and those orders are being prepared. As of now you are a brigadier general. The next drone to Earth will carry my request that the President forward my recommendation to the Senate, and I assure you, they will approve it. Of course, until your promotion is confirmed, you’ll have the rank and privileges of your new grade but not the pay. But”—Billie laughed—“not much you can spend your pay on around here, is there?” He handed Wyllyums a pair of silver stars. “Wear them proudly, General.”

Wyllyums, utterly speechless, could only stare at the stars in his hand.

“Sure you won’t join me in a Clinton, General?” Billie grinned and offered the humidor again. This time Wyllyums took the cigar and Billie lit it for him.

“Sir, I-I—don’t know what to say, except, thank you! I’ll try my best to live up to your expectations.” Wyllyums felt like a swine saying that, but he meant it. Brigadier general, just like that! And he thought he was going to receive the mother of all ass-chewings this morning!

“Now, Wilson, there’s something I want you to do for me.”

“Yessir?”

“You endorsed that recommendation by General Cazombi that Admiral Hoi be authorized to mount a raid on Gilbert’s Corners.”

“Yessir, I did. And you approved it, sir, which I think was very wise—”

“Yes. Well, the admiral has been able to launch a partial string-of-pearls, so we now have some satellite surveillance capability, uh, thanks to your work knocking out those laser guns, Wilson. So. I need you to do two things. First, request Admiral Hoi give us his latest SOP data on the Gilbert’s Corners area, and then I want you to take this”—Billie handed Wyllyums another crystal—“memo for the record, sign it, and put it into your system.”

“And what does it say, sir?”

“Well, Colonel, er, General, hah, hah, takes some getting used to, don’t it? Did me too, when I made my first star. Ah, it comments on General Cazombi’s recommendation. Your private comments, Wilson, not for me, just for the record, you understand. I want you to keep this between us, of course. The rest of the staff does not need to know about your private reservations. In the MFR you endorse Cazombi’s plan, naturally, but you also have reservations about casualties and you mention how reluctantly I approved the plan, my own concerns about harm to civilians being paramount. Read it. It’s all in there. Then sign it. Can you do that for me, Wilson?”

“Oh, er, yessir! Certainly. At once.” So that was the old fox’s reason for calling me up here, showering me with a decoration, a promotion, this stinking cigar, Wilson thought. Billie was hedging his bet on the raid’s outcome. He was asking Wyllyums to request the surveillance, to make it look routine, so nobody would know that Billie was having second thoughts about its success. And no matter how the attack on Gilbert’s went, old Billie would come out smelling like a rose. And to make sure, he would have the satellite surveillance beforehand, to make his own assessment of the raid’s chances of success. But if, as Billie hoped, the raid went wrong and axes fell, he, Wyllyums, with this MFR in the system, would keep his promotion. All he had to do was—was betray Cazombi and the Marines.

Intelligence Division, Confederation Army HQ, Bataan

At first Sergeant Craiggie did not notice the two silver stars on Brigadier General Wyllyums’s tunic, but when he did, he jumped up from his desk. “What in the—?”

“Never thought you’d see them, eh, Craiggie? Well, neither did I, Sarge, neither did I.”

“Sir, what—how—?”

General Wyllyums reached absently for the packet of Capricorns he kept in a tunic pocket, shook one out, and Sergeant Craiggie leaned forward to light it for him. “What did I have to do to get it? Well, I have to eat shit, Sergeant. By the way, I’ve just come from personnel. Now that I’m a flag officer I’m authorized a sergeant major on my staff. I put your name in. I’ll have the orders to you in a few minutes. Congratulations.”

“I guess we should have some of this, then,” Craiggie produced his bottle of bourbon.

“Yes, Sergeant Major, we should, we should. I need something to wash down the nine yards of shit I am about to swallow.”

“Ah, sir,” Craiggie said philosophically, “everyone’s gotta eat some sometime or another. There’s two kind of people in this army, those, like you and me, who do it because we got to, and then there’s those who do it because they like the taste.”

“Sergeant Major, that’s the problem. I think I’m beginning to like the taste.”

Only at that moment did Sergeant Major Craiggie notice that General Wyllyums’s tunic was buttoned up tightly.