Chapter 2: Dispositions

EastHem Military Intelligence Office
New Rome, EastHem
Monday, June 15, 2150
Brigadier Archibald Bullstrode, Assistant Commander of EastHem Military Intelligence, walked into Conference Room B followed by his aide and moved towards his seat at the head of the table. He was interrupted as the rest of the room scrambled to their feet and somebody ordered, “TENN-HUTT!”

“As you were. Let’s be seated,” Bullstrode said. There was a brief shuffle as the assembled officers sat down. Bullstrode looked around the table. “This is more than our regular weekly briefing. I have a meeting in Paris tomorrow morning with the Executive Council and they are going to want to know the status of forces in the Solar System. That means I need to know the latest.”

There was a low murmur of assent around the table. Colonel Juan DeMarche, Chief of Naval Intelligence, spoke up, asking, “Should I run the briefing as usual, sir?” Normally he ran the meetings, since Bullstrode was frequently involved with other meetings and briefings with Army intelligence or Council meetings.

Bullstrode nodded. “Very good, Colonel. I’ll just ask questions as needed.”

“Yes, sir, of course.” DeMarche turned to the others. “Okay, normal rotations. Our dispositions first.”

Colonel Robert Graves, liaison to the Chief of Naval Operations, spoke up. “Not much has changed since the end of Martian Justice.” He grabbed the remote control and threw a slide up on the large monitor at the end of the table. “Currently we have about ten percent of our strength in Jupiter orbit, protecting Callisto and keeping an eye on WestHem activity around Ganymede. Another twenty percent is in Lunar orbit. Twenty percent is in space dock in Earth orbit being refitted; during the runup to Martian Justice we needed to keep a more than usual number of ships prepared to act if the Martian operation proved to be a smokescreen for a possible attack elsewhere. Finally, the balance of the fleet is in Earth orbit.” He flipped through several slides showing specifics of each portion.

DeMarche looked down the table. “Thank you. Captain?”

Captain Maria Heidegger, the expert in WestHem Naval Intelligence, nodded and said, “WestHem lost a huge chunk of their Navy and their Marines. They are going to be years rebuilding. How big a breakdown is necessary?” She asked that of Brigadier Bullstrode as much as she was asking Colonel DeMarche.

Bullstrode answered the question. “I am going to need as much as you can give me. Just how bad did they get slammed, and what are they doing about it now? That’s just going to be the start!”

“Fair enough, sir. I can give you some information on both questions.” It was Heidegger’s turn to throw a slide up on the monitor. “Basic answer to the first question is that the Martians handed WestHem their asses. Like in Martian Hammer, the Greenies sortied their Owls and intercepted the convoy halfway to Mars, only this time they had more ships and were trained and ready for it. In Martian Hammer they only were able to launch four Owls, half-trained and half-manned. This time they launched six ships that were fully manned and very well trained. The training paid off.”

A different slide went up on the screen. “In Martian Hammer, the four Greenie Owls destroyed or damaged seven Panamas and a Seattle, killing over one-hundred thousand Marines and Naval personnel at the cost of one Owl. This time around, six Owls took on a vastly larger fleet and trashed it even worse. They destroyed half a dozen Californias, fourteen Panamas, and half a dozen Seattles and freighters. That was the first convoy. WestHem then launched a second convoy and a single Owl took out two more Californias, a Seattle, and five supply ships. In other actions they captured a tanker convoy from Jupiter after killing two Seattles and two Owls or Cheneys, not sure of the details there, another Owl in Martian orbit, and three ships by limpet mine after the first convoy left Earth orbit. They only lost a single Owl but killed forty-four ships and four-hundred thousand Marines and sailors. That was before they even got to Mars!”

“Oh, shit!” Bullstrode muttered. He looked at Heidegger and said, “I knew it was bad, but it sounds so much worse when somebody says it officially. How accurate are these numbers?”

“Very, Brigadier. They come straight from the New Pentagon in Denver. We’ve been pushing our agents to develop as much intel as possible. Mind you, that was only the naval losses. Once they got down to the surface, the Greenies handed them their asses all over again,” she told him.

“How bad?”

This time a Marine Colonel answered. “Jacob Winters, Army Intelligence, sir. In the first invasion, the Martians, the MPG, the Martian Planetary Guard, killed or captured roughly a hundred thousand Marines or Navy people on the surface. This time, they killed about one-hundred-and-seventy-five thousand Marines on the ground and captured another twenty-five thousand prisoners. It was nothing but sheer slaughter.”

Bullstrode nodded and asked, “Why is that, Colonel? What were Martian losses? What made it so lopsided that the Marines backed away and went home with their tails between their legs?”

“It’s the same reason the Marines lost on Callisto, sir. There is simply no room for error in space. Here on Earth, you make a mistake, you can back off and hide, lick your wounds, and regroup. On Mars there is nowhere to back away to. You can’t take off your helmet and go find a local stream and refill your canteen. No air, no water, no supplies. You get hit, there’s almost a hundred percent mortality rate. A medic might be able to slap some coagulant on the wound and hope the suit seal works but that’s about it. You need to get the guy back to a pressurized environment to crack the suit and work on him. We all learned that the defensive advantage in combat is something like three-to-one. In Martian Hammer the Greenies lost less than four thousand. We don’t know the butcher’s bill for Martian Justice yet, but it might well be less than ten thousand. It’s a twenty-to-one ratio. WestHem doesn’t have enough Marines altogether to handle that kind of loss.”

“Huh. So, their disposition now?”

Heidegger answered, “What was left of Martian Justice returned to Earth orbit. Even though WestHem began a massive construction and restructuring program following Martian Hammer, their total force is no more than half what it was before the Martian revolt. They are saying they are going back, again, but if they took every ship and Marine in the system back to Mars, all they would be doing is giving the Martians more targets to kill.”

“Jesus!” exclaimed DeMarche. “How the hell are they doing it? They killed over forty ships and lost only a single Owl!”

Heidegger motioned towards another officer at the table. “Might as well switch from WestHem to Mars. I don’t think you’ve met Colonel Wilhelm Hesse. Wilhelm runs our Martian intelligence division. He might have some answers.”

Bullstrode looked at Hesse and smiled. “Colonel? You’re on!”

Hesse nodded and threw a slide onto the monitor. “It took us a while to figure out, but we think we understand what happened. When the Martians captured Triad Naval Base, they grabbed ten Owls from the WestHem Navy. They were barely able to partially man four Owls and that’s what they used to attack the convoy in Martian Hammer. They lost one of those four, leaving them with a total of nine. Since then, they have fully manned the ships, and they have played musical chairs with their officers and petty officers, moving them around to give some experience to every ship they own. It worked, too, even to the extent that they moved some of their officers and crews to their eight captured Seattles. They have been using them for base defense.”

“Still, nine Owls and eight Seattles shouldn’t have been able to attack a convoy the size of Martian Justice,” said Bullstrode.

“They weren’t just Owls, Brigadier. This is what took us some time to figure out. We analyzed their operational patterns. We’ve been able to sneak a Henry in occasionally to see what they are up to. They always keep one or two in Mars orbit backing up the Seattles. There’s always been one or two in space dock being resupplied and refitted. There’s always one or two simply missing, and we suspect they are in Earth orbit or in transit, spying on WestHem and us. The remainder are doing fleet maneuvers. They attack as a fleet, not as singletons. Anyway, what we caught was that some of their Owls would enter space dock and not just get resupplied. Normally, a ship comes back from a deployment, they put into dock, and everybody gets some leave. They go home, get drunk, get stoned, get laid, have some fun. Then, after a few weeks, they go back to the ship and get ready for the next patrol.”