When the Devil Dances

She waited as the others reluctantly left the circuit then turned back to the image of the distant general. “General Horner, the Chinese fired over two thousand nuclear weapons and poisoned the valley of the Yangtze for the next ten thousand years. You propose to do much the same to the Tennessee Valley, you understand that? And they still lost. That is the greatest part of the problem, the very real political and more importantly morale problem. Nukes, now, are considered to be the last desperate weapon of someone who is losing. Who, in effect, has already lost. That is the real reason that I have prevented their use; the image of them being the desperation weapon. Is it worth the… social damage that will occur? Is it worth the physical damage; the Tennessee drains into the Mississippi. For that matter, it is the water source for the entire lower defense line and it will be poisoned by dropping nukes into that valley.”

Horner opened his mouth and closed it then opened it again and sighed.

“First, Madame President, let me say that I appreciate you… explaining that. If you had done so before, however, I could have suggested some ways that we could have… adjusted that public perception. We could have used them in the ‘fortress cities’ in the plains, after telling the public that we were simply opening up, effectively and pardon my language, ‘the whole can of whup-ass.’ I think that would have permitted a reevaluation on the part of the public.

“Second,” he paused, unsure of how to phrase it, “let me say that your knowledge of nuclear warfare and weaponry does you as much disservice as your knowledge of geography does you credit. We’re not using traditional ‘dirty’ nukes for this; we don’t have them. The warheads in the missiles we’ll be using, the last few Peacekeepers we have in silos, are relatively ‘clean.’ The radioactive exposure for persons downwind of the blast, in the ‘fallout zone’ will be less in one year than the acceptable exposure for an x-ray technician.”

“General, if you’re trying to tell me that there won’t be any radiation from these weapons, please save it for the talking heads,” the President snapped. “Even ‘clean’ nukes are dirty.”

“Madame President, you can believe anything you want,” the general said coldly. “And I’m sure that the ‘Greens’ will scream bloody murder. But the radiation left from dropping a couple of billion megatons on that valley, and we don’t have that much, more’s the pity, will raise the background radiation of the Tennessee to that of, oh, living downwind of a coal-fired power plant. And we have lots of those.

“Be that as it may, this is a desperation use. If we don’t plug the Gap, it’s all over but the screaming. You, personally, and your staff and whatever dependents you have there with you, will undoubtedly survive. Something resembling civilization may even continue north of the ‘cold line’; the Posleen can’t organize a logistics line to save their lives so they’re never going to take, say, Athabasca. I understand that Montreal is a very pretty city, but all the survivors in the United States can’t fit in Canada, not in any sort of sheltered fashion, much less survive for any length of time. We have to plug the Gap. We have to keep it plugged. I need nukes to open it up so I can insert the plug. I’ll probably need them again to open up other points and reduce the Posleen in the Valley. We won’t have a lot of other choices this time.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t have any more ACS to throw away.”

The President looked at the papers on her desk for a moment and shook her head. “Will it work? Not just putting the ACS in place; I thought the Posleen shot down anything that was above the horizon. Will the missiles even be able to get to Georgia?”

“I don’t know,” Horner answered. “The remaining silos are all well north of the Posleen lines and there’s a strong storm across the Midwest. The combination should permit most of the missiles to fly. They’re most vulnerable in boost-phase, of course, but they’re going to loft very fast. The Posleen lose some of their efficiency when the targets get into orbital phase. We’ll just have to see if they make it.”

“And if they don’t?” the President asked.

“There’s… at least one other option,” Horner said with a smile that for him indicated extreme unhappiness. “The University of Tennessee has both a SheVa gun enhancement testbed program and a nuclear, antimatter rather, rounds program.”

“So… they can fire?” the President asked. “Antimatter is better than nukes, right? I mean, their fire can reach the Gap? And it’s a better, a cleaner, system?”

“Possibly,” Horner answered. “I’d… Both of the systems are experimental, ma’am. And their… area denial round has never been field-tested. It’s also… rather large, a very heavy warhead; you really would prefer not to know the megatonnage. The first time I fire something, I don’t want the price of failure being the loss of the entire Cumberland Valley.”

“Oh.”