Arrows of Orion (redux)

15th day of Midyear, P.C. 22473
21 August 2015



The President heaved a great sigh and looked out the window past the imposing monuments and the public buildings of the capital, the white of the marble stark against the sky, at the distant horizon. Great, blue-black clouds gathered and piled up on each other in a boiling mass, reaching out for him, as sheet lightning flared fitfully and occasionally resolved itself into a multitude of bluish-white bolts tracing incredibly intiricate and brief patterns across the sky. There was a storm coming, alright, no doubt about it. Though he couldn't hear it yet, if he concentrated hard enough, he could just feel the ominous rumble of ditant thunder.

He sighed again, taking that as a warning. He couldn't help but feel that if he were truly lucky, one of those lightning bolts would reach out of the sky and end what was rapidly becoming a miserable existence. At least then, all of his worries would become someone else's problem, and he could at last rest.

The reason for his bout of melancholy lay untouched on top of his low desk, the latest report from the war zones, nestled between its bright red covers, the security seals unbroken. He hadn't bothered to read it, already knowing what it said.

The cold, precise language would drone on for pages, backed up by charts and graphs and statistics, but in the end it would all come down to a single, inescapable conclusion. They were all living on the borrowed time of a terminally ill patient, and time was running out.

The intercom on his desk buzzed, breaking his train of thought as it demanded his attention. He turned away from the window and the approaching storm, silencing it.

"Yes?"

"Mr. President, the Chief Minister is here," his receptionist said.

"Thank you. Please show him in," the President said. He got up and came around the desk as the door opened to greet his visitor.

"Good afternoon, Estlandor," the Chief Minister said, raising a hand and bowing slightly. Having known him since childhood, he was one of only a very select few who would dare to address the President by his familiar name.

"Athlenshar. It is good to see you," the President eplied, returning the gesture with a slightly deeper bow.

"Is it?" Athlenshar said, his ears twitching in amusement.

"Why wouldn't it be?" the President asked, knowing exactly why it wouldn't but observing the niceties nonetheless. He indicated a chair. "Please, sit."

"Thank you." There was a low, drawn-out boom as Athlenshar slid into the seat, rattling the windows in their frames. "Quite a storm brewing, isn't there?" he asked.

Estlandor grunted, wondering how much of a double meaning his visitor had really intended. It was, he decied, no doubt deliberate, given the reason for the Chief Minister's visit. He had known it was coming, and had dreaded it. "The likes of which we have rarely seen," he agreed, answering one double-entendre with another.

"You have no interest in keeping up with your reading?" Athlenshar asked, gesturing at the report sitting untouched on the desk.

"What's the point? I already know what it says," Estlandor replied, holding his hands out in a shrug. "And it's depressingly the same as the one before that, and the one before that . . ."

"The war does not go well," Athlenshar said, flapping his ears in agreement. "Ninth Fleet is smashed, Eslanor and Arason are lost, and the enemy continues to come on."

"The war has never gone well, my friend, and now it is going from bad to worse. The Outer Rim is long gone, the Mid-Marches are all but gone, and it won't be long before the Core is breached."

"And you do not believe we can prevent that," Athlenshar said.

"Not quite true," Estlandor said, twitching a hand in negation. "We have, as you well know, one possibility. But we have to be willing to take it."

"There is, you know, a sizeable minority of the Master's Council that believes that would be a mistake," Athlenshar said carefully.

"I am aware of that. They are being foolish."

The Chief Minister sighed. This was an old argument and, in truth, one on which he was himself undecided. He could see merits on both sides of the debate. "Be that as it may, even you have to admit that the results the last time were, shall we say, less than optimal."

"We acted hastily then. The Council wanted results immediately, misjudged the need for further development, then overcompensated and acted rashly. That was a mistake," Estlandor said, waving away the objection. "We have learned from that, refined our techniques, and the subjects are more mature now."

"Indeed," Athlenshar said in a neutral tone.

"The point is, we have no choice, now. You know that, and so do they, if they would stop considering their own fears and really look at the data. Our resources are stretched past their limits, and every day we wait, the more we lose and the weaker we become," Estlandor said, irritation creeping into his voice. Tell me, will they not act until the enemy is pounding on the doors of Parliament?"

"It isn't that easy a decision," Athlenshar said, trying to soothe his friend.

"Isn't it? This falls to me, you know, in my capacity as Chair of the Security Council. I could make it an Order of State."

"You could also be removed from office in a vote of No Confidence," Athlenshar pointed out. "And you will be if you try and force your hand without convincing the Master's Council of the need."

"We have no other options," Estlandor said stubbornly. "What more convincing do they need?"

"There are other considerations that have to be taken into account, my friend," Athlenshar said, gesturing for the other to see the reasoning. "Are you sure the subjects can be controlled, for instance? What do we stand to lose if we let them loose on the universe? There will be consequences for that, both for them and ourselves. Their culture is young and uncertain, and they are often unpredictable, while ours is cursed with the fragility of great age. The ones that was have assimilated have become saddled with that same curse, a loss for both them and us. We haven't been terribly successful in mixing, and forcing the issue could be a shattering experience for both. That is the concern."

"A greater concern than losing everything? You've read the reports, too," Estlandor said, gesturing at the one on his desk. "It's a simple data-set. Either we continue on as we have, and the result will be as if we had never existed, or we take the one option open to us and perhaps survive. We can, and we will, guide them, just as any good parent would do. That is our responsibility, to lead them to that which is best for them, and for us. And we have more experience in dealing with their kind, now."

"Well, at least you are confident," Athlenshar said, his ears twitching in amusement again. "Though I must admit that I am hrd pressed to see how a few anthropological expeditions and cullings to replenish the 'wild' strain count as more experience."

"A confidence born of desperation, you mean?" Estlandor asked. "Very well, then, yes. But again, we have little choice. They are a war-like race, and when was the last time we fought a real war? Five thousand years ago? Six? Very few of us are war-like races, and those few are close to exhaustion."

"And that, too, is a concern," Athlenshar said with a sigh. "It would hardly be an optimal solution to be saved from one enemy, only to have our saviours turn on us in the end."

"They won't," Estlandor said, putting as much confidence into his words as he could. It helped that he firmly believed that, too.

"All right, I know you have a plan," Athlenshar said after a moment's thought. "Give it to me, and I will convince the Master's Council, somehow. It may take my first-born, but . . ."

"Thank you, Athlenshar," the President said. He opened a drawer and handed over a thick sheaf of papers.

The Chief Minister looked at them for a moment as if they might bite him. "You realize, of course, that if I do this, they will insist on holding you responsible for whatever happens?" he asked.

"I do."

"All right, then," Athlenshar said, getting to his feet. "I truly hope that you know what you are doing with this. I'll let you know what the Council's decision is." The windows rattled again to another rumbling peal of thunder and the sibilant hiss of a wind gust.

"You should hurry," Estlandor said to his guest. "The storm won't wait long."

Arrows of Orion

Our hearts so stout have got us fame,
For soon 'tis known from whence we came;
Where'er we go they fear the name
Of Garryowen in glory!



Arrows of Orion

15th Day of Endyear, P.C. 22480
11 November 2022

This was really stupid. He didn't need to be right here, playing Forward Observer; he needed to be back in the TOC, running the Regiment, and allowing a real red-leg to be out here, playing hero. Then again, he apparently hadn't done a very good job of that, so the least he could do was try and cover the retreat of what was left. After asking the men and women under his command to risk everything on what turned out to be a fool's errand, he could hardly avoid doing the same.

He set his fieldglasses aside and took a moment to consult his map, verifying the coordinates before he called them in. It had, after all, been a while since he had done this, and it momentarily diverted his mind from the churning mass in the valley and what it meant. The act also served admirably to keep the bittersweet thoughts of his wife and children from breaking through. At last satisfied that he hadn't screwed this up, too, he reached for the radio lying in the dirt by his side.

"Uniform 39, this is Whiskey 77 Alpha," Kelly said into the handset. "Target is approximately four thousand Chirpers, in the open. Fire for effect, VT, UTM CK3397122631." It was a bit of a long shot, but Kelly was confident the artillery could make it.

"Uniform 39. Four thousand Chirpers in the open, fire for effect, VT, UTM CK3397122631," the operator in the Fire Direction Centre replied, repeating the fire request back. There was a few seconds' pause, then, "Shot, out."

"Shot, out," Kelly repeated, then started counting to himself.

"Shot, splash."

"Shot, splash," Kelly repeated again, just as the artillery arrived. He heard a series of muffled thumps as the shells split open in midair among clouds of greyish-white smoke, the sound reaching his ears a few seconds after the sight, scattering their submunitions across the advancing aliens. Each submunition, the size of a softball and packed with explosives and razor-sharp notched wire, exploded either on contact with the ground or at a pre-determined height above it. The result was a rapid series of crack-crack-crack sounds, like all the fireworks in the world going off at once, and the leading Chirper ranks disappeared in boiling clouds of black and grey. Three battalion volleys crashed into the aliens, the shrapnel tearing into their bodies, mixing blood and body parts with the churned earth of the valley.

"Uniform 39, Whiskey 77 Alpha. Adjust fire," Kelly said into the handset, his fieldglasses back up to his eyes even before the last volley fell. He already had his next target picked out. "Target is six thousand Chirpers under partial wooded cover, fire for effect, VT, UTM CK33969122628."

"Uniform 39. Six thousand Chirpers under partial wooded cover, fire for effect, VT, UTM CK33969122628," the FDC answered. "Shot, out."

"Shot, out." A part of Kelly's mind marveled at the coolness of the operator's voice. Of course, the FDC was twenty-five miles behind the rapidly disintegrating front line; that man could afford to be calm.

"Shot, splash."

"Shot, splash," Kelly said. Again, the artillery tore through the Chirpers, the hot, sharp pieces of metal augmented in their effect by jagged, shattered chunks of tree limbs and trunks. The aliens were mangled and torn, dying in their hundreds and thousands, but still they kept coming. Those in back trampled over the dead and dying in a single-minded desire to close with the human enemy, an ocean tide that would not be denied. Watching that writhing mass, Kelly knew beyond a doubt that he was going to die, and the only comfort he could take from that thought was the knowledge that the longer he delayed the Chirpers, the more time he bought for the survivors of this debacle to retreat and for the Army to reform a new line.

Some comfort, he snorted to himself. Pity I won't be there to see it.

Scanning with his glasses, he spotted another large group of aliens advancing out of an abandoned farm. "What a marvellous day for a killing," he mused out loud. "Uniform 39, Whiskey 77. Adjust fire. Five thousand Chirpers in the open, fire for effect, VT, UTM CK33973226626."

Shell after shell screamed out of the sky, tearing through the mass of aliens like a scythe. He could almost feel sorry for them, a race of beings that had mastered the heavens, but somehow missed the concept of indirect-fire weapons. Almost. If it hadn't been for all the death and destruction they'd caused, not just in the United States but all over the world. There had been six billion people and change in the world when the Chirpers arrived; no one knew exactly how many were left, but large areas of the globe had been depopulated by them.

It took him a moment to realize that the last volley had fallen. He scanned for the next target and saw the largest group of Chirpers yet, gathering on the far side of the valley where the Interstate crested a ridge. They were well back from where the other groups had been; Kelly checked his map, and decided to call it in anyway. This group looked like it was taking its time and spreading out to minimize its losses.

"Terrific. Smart Chirpers. Just what I needed," he grumbled. "Uniform 39, Whiskey 77. Adjust fire. Approximately fifteen thousand Chirpers in the open, fire for effect, VT, UTM CK338119225783."

"Uniform 39, negative, Whiskey 77. We can not fire that grid," came the reply. Kelly's heart sank, even though he had been half-expecting it.

"Uniform 39, Whiskey 77. I really need those final protective fires."

"Uniform 39, understood, but we just don't have the range." For the first time, Kelly heard a hint of emotion in the other voice, a sadness tinged with deep frustration.

"Shit." Kelly looked through his fieldglasses at the Chirpers. More and more of them were gathering, in such numbers that even if he brought them under artillery fire as soon as they came in range, he doubted it would stop them. Hell, he doubted he'd be able to adjust fire quickly enough to even irritate them.

"Uniform 39, Whiskey 77. Are there any other batteries in range of that grid?"

The reply took a few moments in coming. "Whiskey 77, Uniform 39. Negative on your last."

Kelly sighed. So, it was finally all over. Well, he thought grimly, everybody has to die some time. "Uniform 39, Whiskey 77. Understood," he said into the handset. "Might be time for you to start thinking about pulling out. There isn't a whole lot between you and the Chirpers, you know."

"Roger, Whiskey 77. I could say the same to you."

Kelly smiled mirthlessly, reaching for his carbine with his free hand. "Uniform 39, negative on that. I kind of like the scenery. I always wanted to retire to the country." He realized it was an empty gesture, but it was far too late for him to try and run now.

"Ah, roger that, Whiskey 77," the FDC operator replied, the calm voice nearly breaking. "We're kind of happy where we are, too."

"Uniform 39, Whiskey 77. It's been nice working with a professional. I'll call you for the last FPF when they're in range," Kelly said. "Been nice knowing you."

"Whisky 77, Uniform 39. Sorry, brother."

Kelly was about to drop the handset when a powerful carrier wave squealed over the radio, and a new voice broke into the net.

"Whiskey 77 Alpha, standby one. We can reach that TRP," a calm, cool female voice said. "Duck and cover, this is going to be Danger Close. Shot, out."

"Unidentified station this net, shot, out. Who is this?" Kelly asked, confused. Not that he was going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he couldn't help wondering who his saviour was and just what the hell was danger close when the Corps guns were out of range.

"Shot, splash," the voice said, ignoring the question.

Kelly opened his mouth to respond, but never got the words out. The heavens were torn asunder by a shriek almost beyond hearing, the noise hammering his ears as the ground bucked and heaved beneath him like a living thing, tossing him into the air again and again. Streaks of living fire reached down out of the sky, starkly bright, the fingers of God raking languidly across the earth, leaving devastation in their wake. When the bolts finally stopped falling, everything that had been in the valley was gone, and the ground looked like a moonscape.

"Unidentified station this net . . . who . . . who the hell are you?" Kelly finally managed to stammer out. The air smelled like ozone, the smoke and dust churned up by the bombardment slowly beginning to drift away on the wind.

"Whiskey 77, this is TF-58. Nice to see you're still with us," the lilting female voice answered. "Do you require further orbital gunfire support?"

"Jesus . . . God . . . no," Kelly said. Nothing moved out where the Chirpers had been. There was nothing left to move.

"We will continue to monitor this net. Have a good one, Whiskey 77. TF-58, out."

Kelly looked skyward as the radio fell silent, dropping the handset to the ground. Unbidden, tears welled up from his eyes and began to slip down his dirt-streaked face. He was going to live; they were all going to live.

Pity the poor Chirpers. The Navy had finally come home.

The Ghost Mumblers

I hate idiots. Really, there's nothing worse in the world. Except, perhaps, for self-important idiots with a talent for negotiating contracts with the idiots in charge of Cable programming. Yep, those idiots are the worst.

So, I guess what I'm really saying is that I hate self-important idiots who have their own TV shows. Why? Well, the simple answer would be, I suppose, because I don't have my own Cable TV show. I mean, I can be a self-important idiot, too . . .

But what is giving rise to my current eruption of spleen is a bit of channel-surfing I did earlier tonight. As I passed by the SciFi Channel - or, as they now like to call themselves in a fit of trying to shove their own heads up their rectums, SyFy - I caught a bit of the latest episode of Ghosthunters International. It seems that that intrepid band of bungling ghost-wranglers - I mean, really, the fact that they've never actually "caught" a ghost does not speak well of their "hunting" abilities - took a little trip to Argentina. To "hunt" for the ghost of Adolf Hitler.

Oy. So many people to smack in the back of the head, so little time.

Leaving aside the fact that there are no ghosts or, if we were to be exceptionally generous, that no one has ever produced bullet-proof evidence of spirits from the hereafter, I again have to just ask, are people really that stupid? Or is this just another example of us not bothering to teach History in school any more?

"Oh, no, senor, Mister Hitler is no here . . ."

I really can't stand bad History, probably because that was one of my Majors in college. Of course, given that I'm talking about a bunch of gullible but, I suppose, ultimately harmless nitwits, I probably wouldn't care all that much . . . except for having also recently suffered through a "documentary" on The Discovery Channel that purported to investigate the "disappearance" of Mr. Adolf at the end of the war, and his "possible" escape to South America.

Again, so mny people to smack . . . but I digress.

Yeah, I know, there's nothing like a good conspiracy theory, because it makes dumb people feel like they're smart. But come on, every good theory has to have some plausible fact on which to hang, which this one does not. Let's face it: how, exactly, did our little Bavarian corporal make it from Berlin to Argentina?

Let's leave aside the fact that we have the testimony of witnesses who were present tha Hitler shot himself in the bunker. Let's also leave aside the fact that we have the testimony of the people who burned his body and the body of Eva Braun in the garden of the Reichschancellery. Hell, let's even toss out the fact that some partial remains of the not-departed-quickly-enough leader of Nazi Germany reside in the Russian national archives - to wit, fragments of his skull and jaw. We'll even ignore that the jaw matches Hitler's dental records, and that DNA testing of the remains - the man did have relatives, you know, who survived the war - confirms their identity. After all, a good conspiracy theorist would tell you all that information could be faked. What possible reason there could be for perpetuating the idea that the greatest war criminal of all time lived out an apparently quiet and happy retirement on a ranch in Argentina is a bit more slippery to explain, but oh, well . . .

Quick History lesson. At the time Uncle Adolf put the Walther in his mouth and finally did the world an overdue favour, Berlin was surrounded by the Red Army. There was no way in, and no way out. Let's remember, the Nazi leaders who survived the fall of Berlin - namely, Goering and Himmler - had gotten out of the city long before the Soviets arrived. Now, do we really think it possible for Hitler to waltz through fifty or so miles of territory controlled by the Red Army in order to reach German lines unnoticed to be credible? The only way he could do it would be to fly and, well, there's a problem with that. By the time he committed suicide, the Soviets had overrun all the airfields in and around Berlin. Yes, Hannah Reitsch managed to fly into the city, using the Unter den Linden as a landing strip, and managed to get her plane shot to pieces in the process. And, yes, she managed to fly out, too, but once again got her plane shot to pieces. Are you really going to put der Fuehrer in that position?

Furthermore, even if you turn your brain off and swallow the idea that Hitler got out of Berlin, you run into another problem. Where, exactly, do you go? I mean, how do you get him from Germany to Argentina? It's not like he could book passage on Queen Elizabeth, you know, and I'm pretty sure that Lufthansa was out of business by then.

Right, so he'd have to go by submarine. I mean, by that time in the war, someone would have noticed a German surface ship, right? So, u-boat it is. But then we run into another little problem: we knew where the u-boats were and what they were doing.

The Allies, you see, were cheating. They were reading the Germans' mail. The British called it "Magic." With a little help from the Poles, they had broken the German Enigma codes at the beginning of the war. In addition, at the end of the war, every German u-boat that was at sea was required to surface and turn itself in to the nearest Allied port or task force. Most did exactly that, and the few that didn't scuttled themselves and hoped that the nearby Allied warships would be kind enough to pick up the now-swimming crews. In any event, no u-boats showed up unexpectedly in Argentine ports or anywhere else in South America.

Finally, consider this. Hitler had literally just turned 56 when he killed himself. In other words, he had a few good years left in him. Even if we presume that he made it all the way from Berlin to Argentina, what did he do with himself for the next twenty or thirty years? This was a man with an ego bigger than God's, who had been a vocal political agitator since the 1920s, and who had run Germany since 1933. Somehow, I just can't picture him sitting around on the veranda, sipping margaritas and waiting to die. Not to mention the fact that he'd have had to spend all that time rubbing elbows with people he would have considered as untermenschen, which would have driven him even more berserk than he already was . . .

Bad History, folks. I've seen enough episodes of Ghosthunters and its spin-offs to know that they conclude every show with a presentation of some sort of "evidence" of paranormal activity. From "personal experiences" to technical glitches with the equipment that get blithely explained away as supernatural forces at work, confirmation bias is truly a wonderful thing to behold.

Except that in a case like this, the whole smoke-and-mirrors thing and the idea of "I believe in the paranormal, therefore it is" tends to trivialize and render mundane something that really shouldn't be. We are, after all, talking about a man who started a war that ultimately claimed over 60 million lives, and who's wishes resulted in the deaths of 12 million people in the industrial machinery of the concentration camps. So, please, rather than chase phantom phantoms and try to spike ratings with what is really nothing more than an insulting publicity stunt, just stop this nonsense.

Don't Worry, We're Just Stopping for Some Ice . . .

You recognize that line, don't you? They come from the Famous Last Words Section, uttered by Captain Smith right after Titanic hit the iceberg. Okay, fine, it's an apocryphal story, at best, but it also seems to sum up the Administration's fumbling of the "Detroit Terror Plot."

In short, we first have Janet Napolitano hold a press conference and say that there was "no indication" that the putz with the bomb on his way to Detroit was involved in any wider plot or had any connections to Al Qaeda. Because, you know, PETN (the explosive compound he had) is so easy to come by. I mean, you can walk into any hardware store anywhere and . . . not get it. But I digress. According to our esteemed head of DHS, the guy was acting all alone. Despite the fact that, more than a month ago, his father came forward and reported to Federal authorities that his son had been "radicalized" and had ties to Al Qaeda. Despite the fact that the guy was on a Federal terror watchlist.

Bang-on job there, Janet, if you'll excuse the pun. And your statement might even have worked if, two days later, the President hadn't come out and said that the guy was linked to Al Qaeda. But, hey, do please keep on telling us that the air transportation system is perfectly safe . . . even though our friend with the bomb in his shorts got the device past two separate checkpoints. Perhaps you'd feel better if you had DHS publish another circular about how the possible rise of home-grown, right-wing terrorism in the U.S. is a bigger threat, and how a sharp eye should be kept on all those NRA members and returning veterans. In a gesture of good faith, I'll even provide you with the fiddle to play . . .

Way to drop the ball, guys.

On the other hand, since it seems that the real threat to America comes from so-called right-wing, conservative Americans and not radicalized individuals and groups from . . . er . . . how do I say this in a politically correct way? . . . certain nations in the Middle East that have a surfeit of a black, gooey substance that powers our industries, runs our cars and pollutes our environment, perhaps now would be a good time to jump sides and avoid the suspicion. Death to America!

Hmm, kind of rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? Death to America! Try it. Death to America! Short, to the point and, if you use it repeatedly, guaranteed to deflect attention if you're still worried about the PATRIOT Act. Why, I bet that if you tossed it into your conversations often enough, people would hardly notice.

"I need to go to the grocery store and pick up some milk and eggs. Death to America!"

"I was at the mall the other day, and I saw the cutest little leather outfit at Lord & Taylor! Death to America!"

"Tonight, it will be cloudy and very cold, with a wind chill factor around five below zero. But, as we can see from the five day forecast, we'll have a slight warming trend, with temperatures reaching into the mid-thirties by Tuesday. Death to America!"

"Oh, man, that new girl slinging suds down at the bar is hot! Death to America!"

"Man, did you see the way the Packers creamed Arizona last Sunday? I'd hate to be in the Cardinals' locker room after that game. Death to America!"

"Sorry I'm late checking in, but my connecting flight on Jihadi Airways was delayed, death to America! I'm really sorry if I created any problems, death to America! Why, no, I'm certainly not carrying any explosives, why do you ask? Death to America!"

See how easy it is? And I'll bet you hardly noticed the phrase being used, thus proving DHS right. I mean, anyone who runs around screaming "Death to America!" can't really mean it, unless, of course, they're devoted listeners of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Always remember that FoxNews is a bigger threat to the American way of life than those poor, misunderstood Al Qaeda folks, death to America!

I sometimes have to wonder, just what is it going to take for people in this country to wake up? Another incident on the scale of 9/11? Look, let's be real clear on this: not every Muslim in the world is just aching to strap on a bomb and take as many of us out as possible. But there is a significant minority of believers in that religion who are so radicalized that that is exactly what they want to do, and Islam is fractured enough that they can find the justification in the theology. To pretend otherwise is, well, very much akin to explaining that we're just stopping to pick up some ice . . .