Issue In Doubt by David Sherman

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.

Chapter Seven
    Barracks, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, MCB Camp Pendleton, California, NAU
     
    “Jesus H....” Lance Corporal Mackie whispered.
    “No screaming shit,” Corporal Adriance whispered back.
    Master Sergeant Thomas W. Kates from 3rd Battalion’s S2 section, intelligence, had just shown them the vids of the attack on Troy, and was now standing next to the projector on the company classroom’s small stage, silently looking at the Marines as they digested what they’d just seen. The company’s officers and senior NCOs stood stone-faced at the rear of the classroom—they’d already seen the vids and been briefed. Some of the Marines sitting on the benches facing the stage were likewise stone faced—they were mostly squad leaders, although some were fire team leaders, or even junior enlisted. Many, including a couple of the squad leaders, looked appalled, or even frightened. The eyes of a few glowed with the excitement of facing a new and horrible enemy, eager to test themselves.
    After a moment Kates spoke calmly. “Nobody knows who they