something more about him than that hangdog look she’d been seeing…well, all of the time, lately. Hope shone in his eyes.
“Maybe it is a waste,” the President said. “You might be right, General. But I’ll tell you something. We need a break and we need it now. If this thing doesn’t work…” He shrugged. “I don’t know that it will have put us that much more in the hole than we’re already in to have given the THOR Project priority and it fizzles.”
“I’m not sure I can agree with you, Mr. President,” Alan said.
“Would you like my input on this, sir?” Anna asked.
The President tore his gaze from Alan and studied her. He must have seen something positive on her face. “Yes, I would like to hear your opinion.”
“You should do this,” she said. “You should give top priority to the THOR Project.”
“Can you give me a good reason why you believe this?” Alan asked her.
“Calculated risks,” Alan said. “We need to finish the tests before we waste precious rocket resources on these bundles. If the THOR missiles don’t work for whatever reason, those rockets will have been wasted. We need the rockets in order to replenish the number of our medium-range missiles. They were vital in stopping the Chinese this winter. They will likely be vital again to stopping the Germans.”
“I don’t disagree with that,” the President said. “But we do need the THOR missiles. We need something that works spectacularly like the Behemoths tanks did.”
It hurt Anna to hear the note of pleading in the President’s voice. Couldn’t Alan understand that they needed to keep David hopeful? Wouldn’t wasting a few rockets be worth that?
“We badly need allies,” Alan said. “That doesn’t mean we get them. We have to face the facts, sir. The truth of the matter is that a new weapons system always has teething problems. The THOR Project won’t be any different, no matter how much we want it or need it.”
“I realize that,” the President said. He looked away, and something hardened on his face. He turned back to Alan, and any hint of pleading had left his voice. “The THOR Project
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs licked his lips. It was clear he planned to fight or at least to resist the idea further.
“That’s an order,” the President added.
Anna hadn’t heard such firmness in David’s voice for quite some time. It helped her decide about Max Harold. She
“And what if the THOR Project fails, sir?” Alan asked quietly.
“Then God help us,” the President said, as a haunted look entered his eyes. “Because I don’t know of anyone else who will.”
Sergeant Hans Kruger of the 10th Panzer-Grenadier Drone Battalion flinched as American artillery landed shells near the GD operational facility.
The crumps outside caused detectable vibration to the building and to the equipment in here. That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen now, or at least not happen for as long as it had been going on.
With the flick of his eyes, Hans checked the chronometer in his set. The shells had been inching toward the “shack”—as they referred to the concrete building—for nearly ten minutes. Where was GD counterbattery fire to silence these impertinent dogs? Command said they had the trapped Americans on the ropes, ready to perform the coup de grace and finish it. The battalion’s single Spaniard would have said it differently: “The Americans were ready for the
The barbaric Spaniards actually went to bullfights these days where they
Hans sat back in his chair and turned his head sharply. Neck bones popped. He rotated his sore shoulders, attempting to loosen them. It was incredible the number of hours a day Command had been demanding from them, week after week.
He sat with others of the 10th Panzer-Grenadier Drone Battalion. They had set up shop here several days ago, with a set for every operator. Twenty-four personnel hovered over twenty-four blue-glowing sets. Like Hans, each operator wore a headset with microphone, stared into his or her screen and minutely twitched manipulation gloves.
The set was Hans’s station, and he’d divided the screen into four equal quadrants, showing him four different camera angles from his panzer-grenadier Sigrid drone. One showed a flickering streetlight, as if couldn’t decide whether to keep working or not. His vehicle carried a 12.7mm tri-barrel heavy machine gun. The three barrels worked like a Gatling gun, helping to dissipate heat from prolonged fire as they shot in fast rotation. Since the ammunition was 12.7mm, it was slightly larger than a .50 caliber American bullet. That meant in a pinch the Sigrid could use captured US ammunition, but the Americans couldn’t fit a 12.7mm bullet into a .50 caliber machine gun. It was a good idea stolen from the old Soviets of the last century.
The box-shaped, armored vehicle was the size of a two-seat electric car, but had treads instead of wheels and had the one heavy machine gun mount. It was electric powered and therefore of limited endurance. The Sigrid had to come home after every engagement in order to reenergize and so the techs could reload it. Most of the guts held ammo for sustained fire.
Hans ran Sigrid Drone #72. Tonight, his company would join an AI Kaiser HK. They would supply the hunter-killer with backup and take care of any annoying infantrymen who tried to slither near the wonder weapon.
The battalion’s commanding lieutenant colonel stood up, and he blew a whistle. It was an old-fashioned silver whistle of Prussian design. No one else did things like that anymore, but no one cared to tell the lieutenant colonel that.
The commander was short, running to fat and was almost bald, but he wore a crisp uniform and his eyes flashed with authority. Anyone in the 10th who had ever failed in a procedure or brought shame to the battalion knew about his wrath. The lieutenant colonel was intent and he had run enough drills so every operator knew his duty to a nicety. The old man also made sure they switched the encryption codes every three hours. That was the great fear among Drone Command. That somehow the primitive Americans might break the encryptions, gain the right frequencies and take over the automated machinery.
“I have just spoken with division,” the lieutenant colonel said. “They have confirmed the rumor. The Americans are mounting a full-scale attack. It seems inconceivable for them to attempt such a thing now, as it is doomed to failure, but…” The lieutenant colonel scanned around the room.
For a moment, Hans felt the man’s stare. He quickly looked down. He’d never had a father, uncle or even a grandfather growing up. There had been no father figure of any type for him. Is that why the battalion commander unnerved him?
“The Americans have animal courage,” the officer was saying. “Luckily for us, they do not have the weapons or the GD mentality to properly employ what they do have. Still, we will take the attack seriously, and we will use it to kill as many enemy soldiers as we can.”
Finally, the lieutenant colonel quit staring at him. Hans took the opportunity to slide long hands out of his manipulation gloves. He put his fingers together and cracked them sharply.
Hans was twenty-five, born and raised in Munich and tall at six-three. He was also as thin as a pole. Hans had aptitude as a drone controller, as he’d spent most of his youth playing video games. For a little while, he’d had one girlfriend. The other times he had spent hard-earned euros at the government brothels. His favorite girls had
