Cost of Infinite Power

Petty Officer Second Class Marcus Ibe stood at the rail as the destroyer came about, its wake curling white against water the color of gunmetal. Behind them, the strait narrowed toward the coast of Yemen, a smudge of brown hills he’d stared at for six months without ever setting foot on.

The order had come down at 0400: reposition east, out of range, hold formation with the carrier group. Not a retreat, the XO had said. A repositioning. Marcus had written the word in his notebook and circled it twice, like that might make it mean something else.

“You look like a man doing math he doesn’t like,” said Chief Alvarez, leaning on the rail beside him.

“Just trying to understand it,” Marcus said. “We’ve got Aegis. We’ve got carriers, satellites, more firepower in this strike group than half the countries on earth put together. And we’re pulling back from guys running around in pickup trucks.”

Alvarez didn’t answer right away. He’d been in for nineteen years, long enough to have stopped expecting wars to make sense in real time.

“You ever hear the story about the flea and the elephant?” Alvarez finally said. “Flea doesn’t have to win. Flea just has to keep landing where it hurts, cheap enough that it can afford to lose nine tries out of ten. Elephant’s got one skin. Every bite still bleeds.”

Marcus thought about the drones — a few thousand dollars of foam and a lawnmower engine, sent low and slow across the water, dozens at a time. Cheap enough to send in swarms. Expensive as hell to shoot down one at a time with million-dollar interceptors. He thought about the missiles fired at merchant ships that had nothing to do with any war, insurers pulling coverage, shipping companies quietly rerouting around the whole Cape of Good Hope rather than risk it. Nobody back home saw a battle. They saw insurance premiums and a few extra weeks on a shipping container.

“It’s not that they’re stronger,” Marcus said slowly, working it out loud. “It’s that they don’t need to win. They just need it to cost us more than it’s worth.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Alvarez said. “That’s the whole trick. You don’t have to sink the fleet. You just have to make the fleet’s owners ask why it’s still there.”

Marcus looked back at the coastline, smaller now, sliding into haze. Somewhere out there were men who had grown up watching bigger armies than this one grind through their country and leave. They hadn’t out-fought a superpower. They’d out-lasted its patience, made themselves too costly and too small a target to be worth the fight everyone back home was watching on their phones.

“Doesn’t feel like winning,” Marcus said. “Doesn’t feel like losing either.”

“Welcome to this century,” Alvarez said, and pushed off the rail. “Get some rack time. We’ll be back on this line by next week. We always are.”

Marcus stayed a while longer, watching the hills disappear, turning the word repositioning over again until it started to sound almost honest.

Like this bullshit? Consider buying me a coffee!