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GWOT V - Inbrief
GWOT V - Inbrief
It had been an interesting month. Whisked from Alviso to Sacramento, then to Monterey to hang with the Naval Militia, then to the San Francisco Project. Now I was actually on the way to my first assignment.
This was not a plane trip. This was a bus ride. Over half of us on the bus were in uniform, but I was one of two officers. The last time I'd been on a bus like this, I'd been convoy commander and my word had been life and death. Now it was a mild-mannered little lady driver with a gaze of steel who ruled this convoy of one, and she would not let us forget it.
The bus arrived in the chaos of what had once been a sleepy Union Station in Los Angeles. Now it hustled and bustled. Trains absolutely packed, buses all over the place. The first warning that this was not your grandfather's America were the pairs of police and troops, one and one each, patrolling alertly with submachine guns.
The next was the propaganda. For someone who had been sheltered behind walls for nearly a year, it was like shouting into my soul. California this. California that. The Golden Bear. A New Dawn.
I reported to the transit office for my next set of travel orders. They gave me a cab voucher and an address for the driver.
That cab dumped me out in a sprawling area well outside what the huge signs said was CARSON BASE - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY - THIS MEANS YOU - FORCE AUTHORIZED.
I shouldered my duffel and walked towards the gate. Apparently vehicles weren't even permitted inside. Even for California that was a bit secure.
I showed my orders to the gate MPs.
Things got rather organized. A golf cart gave me and my luggage a ride to the BOQ, a converted hotel. The message on my room's voicemail told me to consider myself as having reported to the commanding officer and having made courtesy calls, and to report at 0800 the next morning to the Briefing Center.
This left me with an evening to kill. I took advantage of the facilities to catch up on my laundry and my E-mail. I studiously ignored the bar. I'd had to do social drinking at Monterey, and resolved once again to not touch a drink except in line of duty. Just as I'd returned all my prescriptions to the closing pharmacy at Alviso when I'd closed it.
We were all bugfuck crazy. Alcohol and drugs would only confuse the issue. I had to face my demons on my own.
My E-mail promptly reminded me of those demons. In between the minutae of travel and orders and how far I was behind on my mandatory electronic training programs, access to detailed intelligence on the many problems facing California and the threats posed by our many enemies, ad nauseum, there were exactly three personal items.
1) My query as to the specifics of the demise of Captain (post. pro.) Rize had been rejected on need-to-know grounds. We'll let you know when we can, which is not soon, and stop asking.
2) The infirmary surgeon from Site had completed her assignment when Site closed its infirmary and specified that she preferred an assignment in the same unit as me. Did I also concur? I clicked Yes without thinking about it.
I was curious. That's how I found that I couldn't see any information about Site. As if it had never existed, and I had never been in charge of the security there. Eventually I found a vague reference to "industrial medical care sites consolidated to Valley Medical City."
3) Mo had pointedly refused promotion to officer. Again. The California Republic has a warrant officer track but not by that name. Instead, it has a sideways Sergeant track that starts over with Sergeant-Cadet and leads to Sergeant-Lieutenant, Sergeant-Captain, Sergeant-Major, Sergeant-Commander and finally Command Sergeant Major, of which each of the armed services has a handful. As a bomb tech in command of a bomb tech unit as an NCO, he had been frocked (ordered) to accept the rank of Sergeant-Captain and was not happy about it.
As any student of human nature or organizational behavior can tell you, it is easier to change the organization chart than it is to change the people in it. We needed leaders so very badly that the NCO that would not become an officer could be made into one anyway.
I sent my backhanded condolences. It would be good for Mo. And with good fortune, he'd never have to touch a live device again. Everyone's luck runs out and he'd had far more luck already than most.
The base uniform service was good. That in turn implied the possibility of a PX that knew what it was doing.
I investigated. I found out.
For the first time in my career, I was able to actually purchase the uniforms appropriate to both my rank and to field service.
My officer's credit card smoked. But this was an opportunity only a fool would pass up.
So it was, the next morning, that I was dressed in an impeccable Class A uniform for the first meeting.
I don't know what I expected.
What I got was a seat in a huge lecture hall and a general giving a brief, but memorable lecture.
"Morning. This is not a good morning. Over half a million of our fellow citizens are unable to join us this morning. Because they were murdered."
It went downhill from there. I'll spare you the litany - either you lived through it, and you know, or you didn't, and what the hell are you doing reading something written by a California officer?
"Some of you have had formalized Ethics training. Several of you have even taught various forms of it. This morning, which is not a good morning, we are going to cover the highlights of one of the most important discussions of your career.
"We have inherited much from our predecessors the Americans. What we are seeing to do, imperfectly and in haste, is to integrate all of this with our past. Not just our recent past, with blood and war and radiation, but our distant past. Also with blood and war, if less radiation."
None of us laughed. Nuclear war is as real as the creche for crippled children in every community, as knowing your 'dose' in casual conversation, as mail-order chemotherapy kits and the Thanatos specialization in medical studies.
"One of the things we have realized is that we must be prepared to wage war, frightful war, in the hopes of earning peace. You are in this room because you helped us win the first battle in that war."
Aside from the fact that I didn't do shit. I ran a prison camp. Ok, maybe two for a little bit. But I didn't go eye to laser sight against American main battle tanks in the California desert. Or house to house from Davis to Folsom. Or...
"... today we have one of the witnesses to our stunning victory in the Sierras, here to speak to you about it."
A blind woman was led to the podium. She wore the Class A uniform of a corporal. She did not choose to wear bandages over her ruined eye sockets.
I listened to her. But I didn't bother hearing.
###
At the lunch break, served buffet style in the hallway so that we could return to and eat in our seats, I could see that many of the officers were shaken.
Yay for horrible fights against sharp odds. Bunkers versus bunker busters. Explosives and steel versus explosives and steel. Only flesh yielded. Ours did not. Well, mostly.
The speaker made her way in awkward silence through the buffet line.
I could not help but notice that she was not led. Then I looked closer. She had what appeared to be at first glance electronic jewelry on her ear lobes. Or perhaps hearing aids. Sonic guidance system. Probably needed things nearby to reflect off of, in order to work.
She also had that air about her that suggested that at least for the moment, she was on the permanent base staff. Not a guest like us.
Sure enough, she disappeared through a door marked 'Permanent Party Only.'
I had not made it to the food when a dapper young officer, a lieutenant, came up to me.
"Pardon me, Captain, I need you to come with me."
I shrugged and followed.
The room we ended up in had been the break room for the conference center's staff. Cheap tile floor, durable but plain tables, metal chairs.
"Corporal Franklin, Captain [18]," the lieutenant introduced us, and fled.
Her gaze locked on me.
The surgeon had really done a good job on her eye sockets. I knew from medical experience at Site that any overlooked fragment of the eyeball could cause a lethal infection, as the brain is so close underneath.
"Captain, please have a seat. I wanted to chat with you for a minute."
I nodded, remembered to say, "Yes, Corporal" and sat.
"I volunteered for the Army because my family was sidewalked by Homeland. What I really wanted to do was to find those bastards and kill them all. But I was told that I couldn't. That I needed to sit in a bunker on the side of a mountain and make coffee and do paperwork instead."
Maybe that's how she'd started.
She'd ended up calling for artillery fire on her own position, danger close, with penetrating shells because they were out of the anti-tank needed to destroy the armored fighting vehicles parked on top of their bunker complex.
Senior ranking survivor of a battalion.
"I read about what was happening at Alviso. One day, I read about what happened to the man who commanded the convoy that sidewalked my family. And I told myself that someday, I would find the person who carried out my vengeance for me. And thank them. However they wanted.
"After this," she waved vaguely at her ruined face, "I thought maybe not."
I touched the table, then took her hand gently. With my left hand.
"I appreciate your thanks. It's my turn to thank you. If you hadn't held that pass, there would have been no justice at Alviso. Just a reconquista that would have made the first internments look like a summer camp."
As blind people often do, she moved her hand over my hand to read it.
She did not flinch as her fingers read the lack of fingernails, and the twisted arching of bones and tendons.
We had something in common. Our ruin could be seen with the eyes.
"This is against the rules, Corporal, so let me know what you're thinking. Would you care to have dinner with me tonight?"
Her breath caught slightly.
"They let me do whatever I want. That may not be a two way street."
"I'll worry about that part. Dinner tonight, then. You can send that nice young scared Lieutenant to find me again. Or perhaps play chaperone."
She laughed briefly, then stopped herself. Someone who hadn't heard her own laugh for a long, long time.
"Thank you again. Tonight, then."
I rose and found my way back towards permitted territory. That same Lieutenant intercepted me along the way.
"Captain..." he started to ask.
"Lieutenant," I said very calmly in a tone that made it clear that there would be no discussion, on any topic.
So he let me go and I resumed my seat.
###
The afternoon was generic officer bullshit. Orientation on subjects not amenable to endless slides, PowerPoints, and short videos.
One part arrested my attention.
We stood to attention for yet another General. We'd met several. But this one wore a unit patch I'd never seen before.
A snarling bear, reared, throwing a javelin.
He permitted us to be seated.
He did not give us his name.
Much of what he told us is deeply classified, even now.
But there is one thing I can say.
"California is not a signatory to any of the weapons of mass destruction treaties. Nor the ABM Treaty nor the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Our only protection is our viciousness. We are too small to survive a decap strike. All we can do is be certain to take any enemy down with us. Any enemy, anywhere in the world.
"There is little variation in the frightfulness of nuclear arms.
"The variation is in delivery systems. Aircraft, missiles, fractional orbital bombardment. And brave people with very heavy backpacks."
A beat as we absorbed the implications.
California's WMDs were in the hands of the infamous Bear Force, which had carried out what we called attacks and reprisals and our enemies called atrocities and murders, literally all over the world.
"And also our LIDES, the utterly silent submarines that no enemy can even detect. There could be a nuclear tipped torpedo in the Chesapeake at this very moment."
He flashed a still image on the screen.
A LIDES periscope targeting profile overlaid on a view of the Lincoln Memorial.
It could easily be a fake. But I knew, and the California officers in the room knew, that this was not a subject we would lie to our own about.
He blanked the screen, and the topic moved on to more forbidden subjects.
###
The Lieutenant was troubled, but discreet, in escorting a woman in civilian clothes with a security badge to meet me at the Officer's Club. Despite her discreet bandage around her eyes, everyone knew who she was.
Dinner was good.
Bed was better.
As we lay together in the afterglow, she spoke briefly.
"It is so good to know that there is at least one man who doesn't think I'm fragile."
It was more complicated than that. But not my place to say anything to.
It was my pleasure to escort her to the taxicab out front in the morning. On my arm, in my full uniform.
Everyone not-looked at her, and at me, for the remainder of my visit to Carson Base.
No one said a word.
Then or ever.
It had been an interesting month. Whisked from Alviso to Sacramento, then to Monterey to hang with the Naval Militia, then to the San Francisco Project. Now I was actually on the way to my first assignment.
This was not a plane trip. This was a bus ride. Over half of us on the bus were in uniform, but I was one of two officers. The last time I'd been on a bus like this, I'd been convoy commander and my word had been life and death. Now it was a mild-mannered little lady driver with a gaze of steel who ruled this convoy of one, and she would not let us forget it.
The bus arrived in the chaos of what had once been a sleepy Union Station in Los Angeles. Now it hustled and bustled. Trains absolutely packed, buses all over the place. The first warning that this was not your grandfather's America were the pairs of police and troops, one and one each, patrolling alertly with submachine guns.
The next was the propaganda. For someone who had been sheltered behind walls for nearly a year, it was like shouting into my soul. California this. California that. The Golden Bear. A New Dawn.
I reported to the transit office for my next set of travel orders. They gave me a cab voucher and an address for the driver.
That cab dumped me out in a sprawling area well outside what the huge signs said was CARSON BASE - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY - THIS MEANS YOU - FORCE AUTHORIZED.
I shouldered my duffel and walked towards the gate. Apparently vehicles weren't even permitted inside. Even for California that was a bit secure.
I showed my orders to the gate MPs.
Things got rather organized. A golf cart gave me and my luggage a ride to the BOQ, a converted hotel. The message on my room's voicemail told me to consider myself as having reported to the commanding officer and having made courtesy calls, and to report at 0800 the next morning to the Briefing Center.
This left me with an evening to kill. I took advantage of the facilities to catch up on my laundry and my E-mail. I studiously ignored the bar. I'd had to do social drinking at Monterey, and resolved once again to not touch a drink except in line of duty. Just as I'd returned all my prescriptions to the closing pharmacy at Alviso when I'd closed it.
We were all bugfuck crazy. Alcohol and drugs would only confuse the issue. I had to face my demons on my own.
My E-mail promptly reminded me of those demons. In between the minutae of travel and orders and how far I was behind on my mandatory electronic training programs, access to detailed intelligence on the many problems facing California and the threats posed by our many enemies, ad nauseum, there were exactly three personal items.
1) My query as to the specifics of the demise of Captain (post. pro.) Rize had been rejected on need-to-know grounds. We'll let you know when we can, which is not soon, and stop asking.
2) The infirmary surgeon from Site had completed her assignment when Site closed its infirmary and specified that she preferred an assignment in the same unit as me. Did I also concur? I clicked Yes without thinking about it.
I was curious. That's how I found that I couldn't see any information about Site. As if it had never existed, and I had never been in charge of the security there. Eventually I found a vague reference to "industrial medical care sites consolidated to Valley Medical City."
3) Mo had pointedly refused promotion to officer. Again. The California Republic has a warrant officer track but not by that name. Instead, it has a sideways Sergeant track that starts over with Sergeant-Cadet and leads to Sergeant-Lieutenant, Sergeant-Captain, Sergeant-Major, Sergeant-Commander and finally Command Sergeant Major, of which each of the armed services has a handful. As a bomb tech in command of a bomb tech unit as an NCO, he had been frocked (ordered) to accept the rank of Sergeant-Captain and was not happy about it.
As any student of human nature or organizational behavior can tell you, it is easier to change the organization chart than it is to change the people in it. We needed leaders so very badly that the NCO that would not become an officer could be made into one anyway.
I sent my backhanded condolences. It would be good for Mo. And with good fortune, he'd never have to touch a live device again. Everyone's luck runs out and he'd had far more luck already than most.
The base uniform service was good. That in turn implied the possibility of a PX that knew what it was doing.
I investigated. I found out.
For the first time in my career, I was able to actually purchase the uniforms appropriate to both my rank and to field service.
My officer's credit card smoked. But this was an opportunity only a fool would pass up.
So it was, the next morning, that I was dressed in an impeccable Class A uniform for the first meeting.
I don't know what I expected.
What I got was a seat in a huge lecture hall and a general giving a brief, but memorable lecture.
"Morning. This is not a good morning. Over half a million of our fellow citizens are unable to join us this morning. Because they were murdered."
It went downhill from there. I'll spare you the litany - either you lived through it, and you know, or you didn't, and what the hell are you doing reading something written by a California officer?
"Some of you have had formalized Ethics training. Several of you have even taught various forms of it. This morning, which is not a good morning, we are going to cover the highlights of one of the most important discussions of your career.
"We have inherited much from our predecessors the Americans. What we are seeing to do, imperfectly and in haste, is to integrate all of this with our past. Not just our recent past, with blood and war and radiation, but our distant past. Also with blood and war, if less radiation."
None of us laughed. Nuclear war is as real as the creche for crippled children in every community, as knowing your 'dose' in casual conversation, as mail-order chemotherapy kits and the Thanatos specialization in medical studies.
"One of the things we have realized is that we must be prepared to wage war, frightful war, in the hopes of earning peace. You are in this room because you helped us win the first battle in that war."
Aside from the fact that I didn't do shit. I ran a prison camp. Ok, maybe two for a little bit. But I didn't go eye to laser sight against American main battle tanks in the California desert. Or house to house from Davis to Folsom. Or...
"... today we have one of the witnesses to our stunning victory in the Sierras, here to speak to you about it."
A blind woman was led to the podium. She wore the Class A uniform of a corporal. She did not choose to wear bandages over her ruined eye sockets.
I listened to her. But I didn't bother hearing.
###
At the lunch break, served buffet style in the hallway so that we could return to and eat in our seats, I could see that many of the officers were shaken.
Yay for horrible fights against sharp odds. Bunkers versus bunker busters. Explosives and steel versus explosives and steel. Only flesh yielded. Ours did not. Well, mostly.
The speaker made her way in awkward silence through the buffet line.
I could not help but notice that she was not led. Then I looked closer. She had what appeared to be at first glance electronic jewelry on her ear lobes. Or perhaps hearing aids. Sonic guidance system. Probably needed things nearby to reflect off of, in order to work.
She also had that air about her that suggested that at least for the moment, she was on the permanent base staff. Not a guest like us.
Sure enough, she disappeared through a door marked 'Permanent Party Only.'
I had not made it to the food when a dapper young officer, a lieutenant, came up to me.
"Pardon me, Captain, I need you to come with me."
I shrugged and followed.
The room we ended up in had been the break room for the conference center's staff. Cheap tile floor, durable but plain tables, metal chairs.
"Corporal Franklin, Captain [18]," the lieutenant introduced us, and fled.
Her gaze locked on me.
The surgeon had really done a good job on her eye sockets. I knew from medical experience at Site that any overlooked fragment of the eyeball could cause a lethal infection, as the brain is so close underneath.
"Captain, please have a seat. I wanted to chat with you for a minute."
I nodded, remembered to say, "Yes, Corporal" and sat.
"I volunteered for the Army because my family was sidewalked by Homeland. What I really wanted to do was to find those bastards and kill them all. But I was told that I couldn't. That I needed to sit in a bunker on the side of a mountain and make coffee and do paperwork instead."
Maybe that's how she'd started.
She'd ended up calling for artillery fire on her own position, danger close, with penetrating shells because they were out of the anti-tank needed to destroy the armored fighting vehicles parked on top of their bunker complex.
Senior ranking survivor of a battalion.
"I read about what was happening at Alviso. One day, I read about what happened to the man who commanded the convoy that sidewalked my family. And I told myself that someday, I would find the person who carried out my vengeance for me. And thank them. However they wanted.
"After this," she waved vaguely at her ruined face, "I thought maybe not."
I touched the table, then took her hand gently. With my left hand.
"I appreciate your thanks. It's my turn to thank you. If you hadn't held that pass, there would have been no justice at Alviso. Just a reconquista that would have made the first internments look like a summer camp."
As blind people often do, she moved her hand over my hand to read it.
She did not flinch as her fingers read the lack of fingernails, and the twisted arching of bones and tendons.
We had something in common. Our ruin could be seen with the eyes.
"This is against the rules, Corporal, so let me know what you're thinking. Would you care to have dinner with me tonight?"
Her breath caught slightly.
"They let me do whatever I want. That may not be a two way street."
"I'll worry about that part. Dinner tonight, then. You can send that nice young scared Lieutenant to find me again. Or perhaps play chaperone."
She laughed briefly, then stopped herself. Someone who hadn't heard her own laugh for a long, long time.
"Thank you again. Tonight, then."
I rose and found my way back towards permitted territory. That same Lieutenant intercepted me along the way.
"Captain..." he started to ask.
"Lieutenant," I said very calmly in a tone that made it clear that there would be no discussion, on any topic.
So he let me go and I resumed my seat.
###
The afternoon was generic officer bullshit. Orientation on subjects not amenable to endless slides, PowerPoints, and short videos.
One part arrested my attention.
We stood to attention for yet another General. We'd met several. But this one wore a unit patch I'd never seen before.
A snarling bear, reared, throwing a javelin.
He permitted us to be seated.
He did not give us his name.
Much of what he told us is deeply classified, even now.
But there is one thing I can say.
"California is not a signatory to any of the weapons of mass destruction treaties. Nor the ABM Treaty nor the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Our only protection is our viciousness. We are too small to survive a decap strike. All we can do is be certain to take any enemy down with us. Any enemy, anywhere in the world.
"There is little variation in the frightfulness of nuclear arms.
"The variation is in delivery systems. Aircraft, missiles, fractional orbital bombardment. And brave people with very heavy backpacks."
A beat as we absorbed the implications.
California's WMDs were in the hands of the infamous Bear Force, which had carried out what we called attacks and reprisals and our enemies called atrocities and murders, literally all over the world.
"And also our LIDES, the utterly silent submarines that no enemy can even detect. There could be a nuclear tipped torpedo in the Chesapeake at this very moment."
He flashed a still image on the screen.
A LIDES periscope targeting profile overlaid on a view of the Lincoln Memorial.
It could easily be a fake. But I knew, and the California officers in the room knew, that this was not a subject we would lie to our own about.
He blanked the screen, and the topic moved on to more forbidden subjects.
###
The Lieutenant was troubled, but discreet, in escorting a woman in civilian clothes with a security badge to meet me at the Officer's Club. Despite her discreet bandage around her eyes, everyone knew who she was.
Dinner was good.
Bed was better.
As we lay together in the afterglow, she spoke briefly.
"It is so good to know that there is at least one man who doesn't think I'm fragile."
It was more complicated than that. But not my place to say anything to.
It was my pleasure to escort her to the taxicab out front in the morning. On my arm, in my full uniform.
Everyone not-looked at her, and at me, for the remainder of my visit to Carson Base.
No one said a word.
Then or ever.