Scissor Link by Georgette Kaplan (good books to read for adults .TXT) 📕

the floor, flags and framed pictures tried to obscure the bulkheads that made up the walls. Wendy examined a few: military porn. A Lockheed Martin F-16V IN Super Viper in flight, a squad of F-22As dropping JDAMs, a few of West Point graduates posing or USMC Scout Snipers in full gear, walking the desert. It made her wonder just how many stories had ended up, after all the blood and sweat and tears, as set decoration.

The crowd was a robust mix. Mostly colonels, if Wendy was getting her stripes right, and from all branches. Lots of full birds, lots of lieutenant colonels, lots of medals as well. Purple Hearts, Silver Stars—if Wendy had to guess, she’d say this was grunt work, but still important grunt work. These guys might not have been primetime, but they were the rising stars, and what they said today would influence the top brass decisions in five, ten, fifteen years’ time.

Then there were the defense contractors like her and Janet. Business suits so dark they were practically a uniform in and of themselves; their only medal was that they’d gotten an invite over here. Wendy straightened the lapels of her jacket. Dress code, informal as it was, meant no skirt and panty fun, but it also meant Janet in a pantsuit. Small blessings.

Janet returned from schmoozing a DARPA chief, with two cups of coffee. Styrofoam.

“You’d think sixteen percent of the national budget would get them some mugs,” Wendy said, taking hers.

“You’d think twenty-four percent of it would get my nana better social security benefits, but there you go.”

“Oh my God, you call her your nana?”

Janet drank her coffee. So did Wendy, suddenly feeling a wave of guilt. Speaking of grandparents, she hadn’t exactly been honest…

“If everyone is ready? We’re about to begin,” said the major in charge of the exercise. He was easy to distinguish, wearing fatigues to emphasize that he was on active duty. The room was one long hall, the entrance at one end, at the other an open viewing port that ran the length of the wall. Covered by bulletproof glass, it looked out over the gunnery range, HDTVs mounted over and below to show off footage being recorded by chase planes and drones. Now all we need is a jumbotron and a hot dog vendor, we’re in business, Wendy thought to herself.

She drew close to the glass, looking out at the range. It reminded her a bit of period pieces about Hollywood: films where Marilyn Monroe or James Stewart were characters. Someone always visited the backlot, an Old West town with facades of buildings that were just plywood when seen from behind. These buildings had four walls, but not much else. Junker cars and retired tanks were laid out on the unpaved streets, as well as dummies dressed in black bad-guy uniforms. The few acres formed a reasonable approximation of some blocks in an enemy city, if bisected and transported on to government land. “We’ll begin with our new AEW&C, the Boeing 898 Sentinel, which will fly overhead to perform area search, and command and control duties…”

The monitors showed various views of the aircraft, a big pelican of a thing, feeds showing its crew, the view from some of its many cameras, and the view from within the ‘city.’ Wendy craned her neck to see it in the sky. There was barely a dot.

It went like that for the better part of an hour, though rarely that peaceful. Many of the planes being demoed were refinements—theoretically, at least—on old classics—again, theoretically. So Wendy saw a lot of old news. F-22s with upgraded weapon systems flew trailing colored smoke to show off their moves, lobbing off flares as if they were being shot at and dropping new PGMs on a few targets. They saved some for the H4 Self-Propelled Howitzer, the Multiple Launch Rocket, airstrike after airstrike after airstrike, the targets being reduced to rubble and smaller rubble and then into dust.

The major kept up his narration, gesturing with a laser pointer to a model of the alleged city, pointing out how an attack would target this building in particular, or this floor in particular, or this wall in particular. It was all a bit moot when saturation bombing left the whole thing a parking lot. A parking lot with a lot of potholes.

“Kinda scary, isn’t it?” Wendy whispered to Janet, watching another explosion punch at the air.

“It’s a scary world,” Janet replied. Then, as the fireworks went off, their noise demanding attention, she reached casually into Wendy’s pants and felt her bareness. Just a taste of Janet’s hand before she took it away. “No panties. Good. I love a woman in bare skin.”

“You have a cavewoman fetish? I’m not that butch!”

There was a hill on the far end of the range that took the really big hits, the ones that just showed off how big a bang they could make. Wendy wondered how long it would be there. If one day it would just be worn down, like a boulder in a river.

The final bomb fell, a bunker-buster taking out a fortification that could’ve been theirs, as the major almost gleefully noted. And then the meat market was open. Her, Janet, the Boeing boys and the Lockheed Martin guys and Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, all trying to cast aspirations here, suggest improvements there, find a way to get their hat in the ring and someone else’s out of it.

“As you can see,” the major concluded, “we’re quite confident in the current range of warfighters in suiting any power projection need, from destroying a single room with a Predator drone to complete area denial. Any questions?”

“I have one,” Janet said. She finished her coffee before continuing, having nursed it all through the demonstration. She handed the empty cup to Wendy. “I assume, in the field, this will all be integrated with forces on the ground. Tanks, Humvees, troops…”

The major nodded, not feeling the need to verbally confirm such an obvious question.

“So then…”