Starfist: FlashFire by David Sherman & Dan Cragg Page B

very competent officer,” he finally gritted. “You’ve served with distinction on my staff, and your third star is virtually assured—”
    “Admiral, you cannot bribe me—”
    “Shut up!” Porter thundered. He took a moment to regain his composure. “You will end this train of thought immediately! One more mention of the alien threat and I swear by the Holy Martyrs’s twisted guts, you are finished here.”
    “Admiral,” Cazombi replied coolly, “you and everyone who supports this stupid policy are a goddamned ass. The farther I can get away from you the better.”
    And Admiral Porter obliged him.
    So Major General Alistair Cazombi found himself sitting quietly in a strategy meeting as Brigadier General Balca Sorca and his staff tried desperately to devise a defensive plan to deal with what everyone knew was coming, a Coalition attack on Fort Seymour. Bitterly, Cazombi reflected that if the Confederation government had let everyone know about the Skinks, the reinforcement of Fort Seymour would have been seen in a different light and they might not now be in this pickle. But he was not at liberty to say that, even if anyone had been willing to listen.
    Cazombi had been invited to the planning meeting as a courtesy because he was the ranking officer at Fort Seymour, but he was not expected to participate except insofar as the involvement of his garrison complement was concerned. The meeting had been going on for an hour before Cazombi decided to speak up.
    “General,” Cazombi said, interrupting Sorca in midsentence, “do you really think a front-line defense is wise? I should think a defense-in-depth would be more effective.”
    “Yes, General! We put everything up front and stop them cold. If they break through and take the main post we’re finished. We can’t let them do that.”
    “Allow me to demonstrate.” Cazombi got up and moved to the huge briefing screen. “Give me an installation schematic,” he told the console operator. “Gentlemen, I’ve been here for months now and I know this post like the back of my hand. Observe the main post area here. It’s a bewildering jumble of warehouses, barracks, offices. Dead-end streets are the common rule. Get any enemy force in there and they’ll slow down.”

“Yes, General, but the other side knows how this post is laid out. The civilians who work here no doubt have cooperated fully with the enemy. They know where the dead-end streets are, where the warehouses are situated, everything. You can bet they know the prices of the women’s wear and cosmetics in the PX too.” Everyone laughed at this remark because the soldiers of the infantry units eagerly bought those items to further their liaisons with the local girls.
    “They won’t once we get started. We’ll block the streets, demolish buildings, dump them into the roadways. I can change the complex of this post in only a few days. What I recommend is delaying forces at the choke points here, here, here, and here. We mine everything and blow the mines as the delaying forces withdraw. When the enemy crosses the open space, about two kilometers deep between main post and the Peninsula, we’ll have registered our artillery on every square meter and they’ll take heavy casualties before they ever reach our main line of resistance, which we’ll have the engineers construct for us. They’ll take ten times our casualties just getting through the Main Post area. That should give them pause. In any event, they’ll have to withdraw and regroup at that point while we sit snug in our defenses. We can hold out on the Peninsula until reinforced. I can defend that place against ground, air, and seaborne attack. For how long? I don’t know, that depends on a lot of factors, but two months at least, long enough to interrupt their timetable and maybe just long enough for a relief force to land and turn the tables.”
    “No wonder they call the place ‘Bataan,’ ” Sorca said. Several of his staff