The Intervention Read online

The Intervention

  By Mark T. Skarstedt

  Copyright 2012 Mark T. Skarstedt

  The Intervention

  . . .they may be - they usually are - fools, void of subtlety, revilers of holy institutions, brutal speakers, and mischievous knaves, but they lie with difficulty.

  - H. G. Wells

  Boormin's Brighties

  Dvenitch was not looking forward to his next appointment. He had been selected to be one of the army's hosts of Boormin's Brighties. He resisted the inclination to think of them as mere punks; they had protection - one lieutenant who had spoken over-sharply to them now had a reprimand in his file. And whatever one's opinion of them might be, they were taken very seriously by an important legislative committee and freely given clearances not granted to many high-level line officers. He glanced at his door plaque on his way by:

  Laboratory 5: Lieutenant D. G. Dvenitch

  Military Intelligence: Ground Contingency Planning

  Bloo Cluster Ground Forces

  He flicked some imaginary dust from it and entered his laboratory. Ten minutes until the Brighties arrived. He powered up his Data Handler, took it off-line, and called up a plan he was safely finished with. A few seconds' work assured him that the intersections were working and all reports were addressable. After a moment's hesitation, he made an illegal copy of it on his Personal Filer, which he physically locked in his desk. Presently there was a stir at his office door, and Sergeant Arkeno stuck his head in. "Visitors are here, sir."

  Dvenitch stood up. "Thank you, Sergeant. Please bring them in."

  "Bring 'em in, Sergeant," said a voice in the hall. "Yessir, yessir, yessir," said another. Arkeno stepped back and was preceded into the room by five males and three females, all in their early twenties, all in unkempt civilian attire, all 'brilliant' students at various elite universities, invited in to . . . Dvenitch wasn't sure what they had been invited in to do. The obvious dominant male in the group, large and muscular, glanced around appreciatively at the room's size. "Cheez, it must be nice."

  "Careful," said one of the females. "We're in the presence of Military Intelligence."

  The lead male cocked an eye at her. "Didn't you know?" he said. "There isn't any!"

  "It's over here," said Dvenitch sharply.

  The students, mouths open to hoot their pleasure, turned to glance at him in surprise.

  "Please pull up seats, and we'll get started." Dvenitch began snapping switches and turning dials in businesslike fashion." He nodded at Arkeno. "Thank you, Sergeant." Sergeant Arkeno, who maintained silence, but who could have broken the lead male's neck with one hand, took his leave.

  The students found stools under lab benches and began seating themselves. Dvenitch addressed them. "I've been asked to acquaint you with Ground Contingency Planning and to use a developed model to show you how it works. Do you want to hear this, over there?"

  His question was directed at the lead male, who had ostentatiously not gotten a stool, and who was now gazing out of a window, hands in pockets. When the boy did not answer, Dvenitch continued. "But first, let's get some names. I'm Lieutenant Donal Dvenitch." He looked at the least noisy of the males. "And you are?"

  After a pause, the boy said, "Fenn Eskry." The boy made no move to shake hands. Dvenitch looked at the female next to him. She said, "I'm Lieutenant Seela Boormin, sir." He went round the faces before him and learned that the noisiest female was Kleo Desh, the second noisiest male was Gannter Dufresne, and the noisiest male was still staring out the window.

  Miss Boormin cocked a thumb at the figure by the window. "He's Lieutenant Shomakk Laggney, sir. As you can tell, he doesn't like the military, sir."

  "You can shut your mouth, Seel," said Laggney. He turned from the window. "If I need . . ."

  "You can shut yours!" snapped Miss Boormin. She made an astounding physiological suggestion, then went on, "Some romeo you are. I'm about sick of your . . ."

  But Dvenitch had snapped another switch. A large screen to their front sprang to life showing an irregular hook of land curving out to sea. Dvenitch said, "This is identified as Peninsula Five on Continent Two of the Planet Daush. Contingency presupposes that we might want to take and hold this peninsula, should we ever . . ."

  "Daush?" said Dufresne loudly. "Why should we get involved there? They're just Bernheimers, not even a Class One Power."

  Dvenitch nodded. "An important point. Probably we never will fight there. Nevertheless, we have plans for it."

  Laggney had left the window and come closer to examine the screen. "Paranoid crap," he said.

  "Until you wish you had it," said Dvenitch. He continued. "In what's called large scale event design, the Staff developed a plan for a strategic push. In the course of it, this peninsula was identified as a possible supply and staging area. I got the assignment to plan its capture and occupation in detail, using allocated resources and standard tactics. I entered the peninsula's physiography, and the software came back recommending a division-size operation."

  "Division-size?" said Fenn Eskry.

  "Twelve to fourteen-thousand men, depending on the operation."

  "How many generals?" sneered Laggney.

  "A two-disc general officer in command. I developed an attack plan, using a typical ground division, and initiated an offensive. The software knows the current characteristics of enemy units, tactical and strategic policy, general readiness - supplied by Military Intelligence, by the way - so it generated an autonomous defense plan, and met my attack with it."

  "Wait a minute," said Eskry. "The Data Handler knows one plan and generates the other? That's not a fair test!"

  Dvenitch shook his head. "It's not supposed to be a test. The software just describes a campaign as it would most likely develop from our initial and in-line conditions. I monitor the outcome, change the plan to improve it, and remonitor. When it looks optimized, it gets integrated into the strategic plan for further modif . . ."

  "Are you on-line or off-line right now?" interrupted Laggney.

  "For this demonstration, I'm off-line."

  "So it's a crap demo. We're not seeing the system the way it really works." Laggney counted off on his fingers. "It doesn't do time-checks; it doesn't do time-sharing; it can't do batch-backup on command; it doesn't coordinate its . . ."

  "We can go on-line very easily," said Dvenitch.

  "You go on-line, or we walk out of here, sir. And I don't think that'll look very good on your record, sir."

  Dvenitch was already closing down the system. He opened it again, and now the little demo was part of the vast Contingency Complex, sharing its memory and processors and storage addresses. He brought the campaign up, feeling more natural with the blazing speed and dead-on resolution of whole-system interaction.

  He nodded at the input surface. "Let's have a look at the situation in this little sub-plan one month into the campaign." He advanced the timer to day thirty. "We'll start with a Random Terrain Sample. Watch the screen, and I'll drop us into Valley 5A."

  The viewpoint on the screen plunged toward the ground, far below. There were gasps. Even Dvenitch, after thousands of zooms, felt his stomach turn over. He took the viewpoint over a ridge and held it for a moment in the air. Hugging the sides of the hill were several stylized, camouflaged buildings.

  Kleo thrust her head forward. "A picture!" she said. "According to Napoleon, the worst thing a commander can do is form a picture."

  "That's right," said Dvenitch, surprised by her knowledge.

  "Well, isn't that just what you're doing?"

  "Napoleon didn't mean this kind of picture," he said. "He was referring to a mental picture: a detailed projection in the commander's own mind, so appealing that he hesitates to discard or even change i
t when the enemy, as usual, blows the plan sky-high. The picture we form here is electronically generated; it has no emotional investment, and it changes with every change in conditions. Let's have a look."

  He magnified the buildings. "The software projects that we'd have built some structures in this valley by day thirty. I've seen them before, so I know this is an ordnance dump with storage facilities. Let's go inside one of the buildings."

  Dvenitch dropped the viewpoint and sent it through a door, to be confronted with stylized stacks of cartons along the east wall. Dvenitch moved close enough to read a stenciled label: "Field Ration, 12 x 1, Set 19A, Bloo Cluster Ground Forces."

  "As you can see, this wall's got food stacked along it;" he turned to the opposite wall; "and along this one are medical supplies and replacement clothing. The software never stores, say, food and fuel together." He moved back out of the door and began to raise the viewpoint. "We can change this picture if we . . ."

  "Wait a minute. What's that?" said Eskry.

  Dvenitch followed his pointing finger. "The mark on the building?"

  "Yeah. Near the corner."

  "Let's check it." Dvenitch brought the viewpoint closer to disclose a horizontal streak in the building's camouflage paint.