Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Twelve

I wait while Major Ramirez, Lieutenant Bucklin, and Lieutenant Tyler exit my aft hatch and make their way clear of any possible danger from rock or debris kicked up by my aft tracks. At Colonel Streicher's command, then, I engage my drive and begin moving on a course of one-two-five, angling toward the city of Ghendai. I am concerned about leaving the command staff in this exposed position but know it would be much worse if a battle took place in their immediate vicinity. 

We will not be gone for long, however. I deploy one of my Dragons and two Wyverns to stay close, just in case. 

* * *

Elken, in troll form, sat strapped and squeezed into the narrow, upright seat on board the black and yellow godflier as it emerged from a hidden tunnel entrance, normally covered over by a slab of featureless ferrocrete. A second flier followed close behind as the two streaked across grassland, hugging the undulations and folds in the ground to avoid enemy radar detection.

The Sky Demon Bolo has been lured away to the southeast, the god's voice said inside his thoughts. We are deploying mobile guns to deal with the forces left to guard the enemy ship. You should have no trouble carrying out your mission. 

They would still have to move quickly, in and out as fast as a striking seadart. As soon as the enemy Bolo figured out what was going on . . .

"Contact!" the godflier's pilot called from the cockpit forward. "Hold on, back there, trolls! This is going to get a little rough!"

The godflier swooped nose-high, and Elken heard the shriek-bang thunderclap of particle guns firing.

He clutched his gauss rifle more tightly against his armored chest and waited.

* * *

Long moments after the Bolo had dwindled in a cloud of dust over the southeastern horizon, Lieutenant Kelly Tyler was still seething from the unfair treatment she'd received at the hands of Colonel Streicher. Damn the man, she thought. He has no right! . . . 

And yet a part of her tried to soothe, tried to calm and smooth ruffled emotions over. Of course he had the right. He was the regimental commander, her commanding officer.

But Victor was hers. . . .

"Kelly!" Major Ramirez shouted suddenly, intruding on her black thoughts. "Incoming!"

Major Ramirez was standing in the shadow of the ECD spacecraft, waving to her frantically. Kelly was still out in the open. She'd been unwilling to jog clear of Victor with Lieutenant Bucklin, favoring instead a sullen, dogged walk, and had been left by herself on the field. She'd not even realized she was now alone.

North, something like a six-legged spider was stalking rapidly across the plain, a blocky, turreted body suspended beneath the housing that connected six massive, trunklike legs.

She'd seen the thing in military ID downloads. It was a Mobile Armored Gun Battler, code-named Tarantula by the Confederation. Employed as a kind of slow, mobile fortress to engage armor and air assets, it was far too lightly armored to deal with Bolos on anything like an equal footing, and its twin 15cm Hellbores were considered obsolete for ground vehicles.

As an anti-infantry weapon or for combat against light tanks or aircraft, it was reportedly superb.

One turreted weapon atop the walker housing suddenly angled up, tracking left. In the sky overhead, a pair of Wyvern reconnaissance drones circled . . . then died as the battler opened up with a stuttering, hammering barrage of particle beam fire.

Legs scissoring with a ponderously delicate grace, the Tarantula continued its advance across the field. Kelly thought it was coming straight for her, and when its paired main gun, mounted in a ball turret on the front of its body, opened up with a thunderous detonation, she threw herself to the ground, arms protectively folded over her head.

But the twin-gunned Hellbore burst hadn't been aimed at her. When she lifted her head, she saw one of Victor's Dragon remotes humming past her position, its turret swinging to bring its 20cm Hellbore to bear on the attacking battler.

It fired, and the bolt, a dazzling, blue-white flare so brilliant it momentarily blinded her, seared into the approaching monster, and the detonation that followed sent flaming chunks of one massive leg hurtling across the plain.

In almost the same instant, the Tarantula's main turret swung to bear on the hovertank and slammed out a trio of quick rounds.

The tank staggered in midflight and spun in the air. The battler's Hellbore fired again, gouging huge chunks of duralloy armor from the front and sides of the stricken vehicle. The sheer volume of noise, a thunderous cacophony of explosions and shrieking energy beams assaulted Kelly's ears, as shimmering waves of heat washed across her. She couldn't move, she didn't dare stand and run.

All she could do was endure as the titanic clash of high-energy forces seared and pulsed and exploded around and over her.

* * *

It is a diversion, but not one that I can ignore. Moments after I engage the enemy Bolos—once again, four of them emerging together from the shielded entrance to an underground tunnel—two of my Wyverns and several BIST sensors detect the approach of enemy combat vehicles from the north. 

Two are MBW-12 Mobile Armored Gun Battlers, code-designation Tarantula. Two more are fliers of some sort, almost certainly T-3 airborne carriers vectoring toward the crashed command ship. I estimate a 78-plus-percent chance that the Enemy hopes to capture the regimental command staff in order to acquire combat intelligence on Confederation plans, deployments, and TO&E. 

But the four Mark XXXII Bolos are pressing their attack with relentless efficiency, splitting apart and advancing on my position from three directions, making full use of the cover provided by ruins and partly-burned-out buildings in front of me. 

I direct the two Dragons in my immediate area forward and throw myself in full reverse, hoping to disengage in order to return to the crash site. At the same time, I realize that I cannot afford to let these combat units anywhere near the ship. Large-caliber Hellbore fire would cause unacceptable collateral damage, including serious casualties among the regimental staff. 

I must destroy these Bolos before they can close with the command craft, as I destroyed the others before. 

The Enemy has learned from its previous engagements with me. I may not be able to pull this off. 

* * *

Again, Kelly raised her head, squinting against the pulsing blasts of raw light from explosions, slashing particle beams, and Hellbore blasts. She saw the Dragon, a hundred meters away, lurch to the side, dragging its skirt on the ground . . . and then a hammer-blow explosion tore the vehicle into white-hot pieces. Explosions continued to rip through the walker, however. In the sky overhead, a pair of Warlock fighters stooped out of the crystalline morning sky like silver-black hawks, pounding at the fortress with charged particle beams.

"Kelly!" she heard over her helmet phones. "Kelly, are you okay?"

"I'm . . . all right!" she shouted, breathless under the thunderous assault of noise and shock waves.

"We'll come out and get you!"

"No! Stay under cover! I'll make it!"

She started crawling toward the command ship. Then another round of nearby explosions made her freeze in place. She wondered why she was trying so hard to reach the ship, when she knew that it provided little better protection from the energies being hurled back and forth above her than did empty air.

She raised her head, trying to orient herself. Those few seconds of combat had transformed the landscape around her from grass-covered plain to a withered, blasted field enveloped in smoke, with fires burning everywhere. It might not be much, but even the thin skin of the downed command ship would provide some cover from the thermal radiation loosed by the Hellbore bolts, so she started moving again.

Then stopped.

Two more vehicles had appeared from the north, fliers this time, large and angular, painted in black and yellow stripes, with the implicit menace of huge stinging insects. Her briefing downloads had identified them as Tactical Troop Transports—T-3s—and mentioned that the locals referred to them as "godfliers."

As the battle between Wyverns and walker continued with unabated ferocity, the two fliers skittered through the air and touched down as one, to either side of the crashed command ship. Hatches dropped beneath the insect-like heads, and soldiers, massive in green and brown armor, jogged down lowered ramps and approached the ship.

She groped for the weapon she'd been issued, a heavy Mark XL power gun, unhooking the safety strap and dragging it from the holster slung on her right hip. She took aim at the soldiers and squeezed the trigger, then cursed when nothing happened. She was a shipboard officer, damn it, not an infantryman, and hadn't received more than cursory training with the thing.

She found the safety switch, flipped it, and tried again. This time a thin pencil of bright blue radiance speared from the weapon's muzzle and struck the side of the command ship with a bright sputter of energy.

Three of the armored troops dropped to their knees, raising heavy weapons to their shoulders and firing back. Kelly tried to flatten herself against the dirt and scorched grass even harder as bolts snapped and shrieked centimeters above her prone form.

The Caernan troops were using magnetic accelerator rifles, gauss guns in popular parlance, using magnetic induction to fire slivers of steel-jacketed uranium at hypersonic speed. One of them switched to full auto, and the air around Kelly seemed to jump and quiver beneath the staccato hammering of those high-velocity flechettes.

They were aiming high, however, and when the stuttering barrage ceased, she stayed down. She wasn't sure her power gun would breach that massive armor they were wearing anyway.

It took a moment more for the fact to register on her thunder-wracked brain: those were humans in armor out there, not the six-legged shapes of Aetryx. The Aetryx were supposed to be the enemy, not Caern's human population.

What should I do now? 

Everything seemed to be happening at once. She tried to call for help to the fighters overhead but didn't remember what channel they were using for air-ground coordination. She had to engage her implant and open the menu—words appearing behind her tightly closed eyelids—to find the proper download file.

Then she found the right channel and gave the mental command to open it. Her ears were immediately assaulted by the shouted exchanges of the Confederation pilots above her.

"Red Sting Two! Red Sting Two! Watch it, that thing's still got teeth!" 

"Three, Red One! Try to make your next pass from behind! Circle behind!" 

"He keeps spinning around! I can't get a shot! . . ." 

"Red One, Four! I'm hit! I'm hit! I—" 

"Confederation aircraft!" she called, breaking into the chatter. Looking up, she saw a streak of fire smearing across the high clouds and falling toward the west; one of the fighters had just been clawed from the sky. "Confederation aircraft! This is Cloudtop, on the ground! We are under attack by enemy forces! We need help! . . . "

"Hang tight, lady," a voice replied in her helmet phones. "We got trouble of our—" The transmission was chopped off in a burst of static, and a bright explosion flashed high in the sky.

"Red Sting One is hit! He's going down!" 

Gunfire shrieked, soldiers by the command craft shooting at her, and she felt the shock of each passing flechette.

Kelly squeezed her eyes shut more tightly and prayed for the noise to cease. . . .

* * *

Elken the troll shouldered his way through the open airlock hatch. A black-suited figure rose up in front of him, trying to block his way, but he stepped forward and pushed hard with the butt of his gauss rifle, sending the figure sprawling onto its back. The deck was sharply canted, and moving across it was tough for both sides. But the troll bodies were conditioned for tough climbs and awkward positions, while protosomes were not.

Some of the defenders wore skin-tight black environmental suits. Most wore jumpsuits of gray or black, which Elken assumed were Confederation army and navy uniforms. It didn't matter. None was a match for the troll rush.

A power gun beam hummed, and the troll to Elken's right and behind him shrieked as a fist-sized chunk out of the pauldron armoring his shoulder vaporized in a puff of oily smoke. Elken snapped his gauss rifle around and stitched the Confederation shooter to the far bulkhead with a high-velocity burst of needle flechettes, the impact opening the man from groin to throat in a blossoming of scarlet flowers.

"Move!" Elken snapped over the tactical net. "Get them! Get them all!"

At first he'd thought that the other trolls would be incarnations of the others, of Palet and Veber and Sendee and others of the company of Bolos driven by human minds. Human souls. But he'd learned before leaving the assembly area in Trolvas that these others were ordinary trolls—derived from human stock, but with rather sluggish minds, minds designed to follow orders explicitly and to the last detail . . . but without real creativity behind them.

The revelation had shocked him. Why had he been singled out as a troll leader? The gods, he was convinced, knew what they were doing. But sometimes it was damned hard to figure out what it was.

Rasping out orders with a voice harsh and gargling with the fury and bloodrush of the moment, he led his team deeper into the crashed Confederation spaceship. This was a main deck of some sort, with a large, circular couch in a sunken well in the center. A woman in an army officer's uniform reared up from within the well, bracing her arms on the back of a couch and aiming a power gun gripped in both hands. The gun hummed, and another of Elken's trolls toppled backward, his helmet visor exploding in shards of plastic and bone and splatters of blood.

He returned fire, hammering a full-auto stream of flechettes into the couch and the woman sheltering behind it. Her head came apart, splattering the far bulkhead with a fine mist of blood, bone fragments, and gray matter.

"Surrender!" Elken called out, using his helmet's outside speaker with the volume set to a booming yell. "All of you! Throw down your weapons! Don't make us kill the rest of you!"

The answer was another round of power-gun fire, and the battle continued for minutes more, as the trolls fought their way into the ship, compartment by smoky, blood-splattered compartment. Three more of the defenders were killed, before the rest, finally, shouted that they were coming out.

It was a ragged and dispirited group of Confederation prisoners that Elken ordered to assemble in a line outside the ship. Beaten and clawed by the trolls who dragged them from the ship, stripped of their uniforms and E-suits to be sure they weren't hiding any weapons, their hands cuff-locked behind their backs, they didn't seem the conquering invaders Elken had been expecting . . . or the fearsome Sky Demons, either.

The revelation that they were just people was a little disconcerting. According to the Histories, Sky Demons were immortals who'd lost their souls rebelling against the gods, and while Elken didn't fully believe some of those old stories, he was disappointed, in a way, to find that the enemy consisted of ordinary people like him.

Well, like him except for the obvious fact of his troll somatype. But that was strictly temporary, his working uniform, as it were, until the enemy was defeated and he could join the gods in immortality.

"Get them on the godfliers," Elken ordered.

He wanted to be well clear of this area before the enemy Bolo returned.

* * *

Kelly lay on her stomach, watching friends and comrades being led from the command vessel and lined up outside. For the past several minutes, she'd been in an agony of indecision. Troll guards had ringed the ship, crouched in the grass facing outward. She'd seen no way that she could have snuck in closer . . . and if she had, what then? There were at least twenty of the Caern attackers and only one of her.

Worse, there were two of those walker monstrosities now. One had been badly damaged, true. Three of its legs had been blown off, or so badly damaged they'd been deliberately jettisoned, but it was balancing a couple of hundred meters away now like a huge, tripodal bug, its weapons turrets searching sky and horizon. The second battler stood farther off, near a line of woods marking the northern edge of the field, and it appeared undamaged.

Two of the Warlock fighters had been shot down. The other two . . . she didn't know. Shot down or fled, it scarcely mattered. They had no place to go, no place to land, and they weren't here. The enemy was in complete control of the battlefield.

She considered calling Victor but didn't. The signal from her E-suit com might well bring a squad of those human-mutant warriors charging down on her. If Victor did arrive, she didn't think there'd be anything he could do, save, possibly, spooking the trolls and precipitating a slaughter of the prisoners.

She squeezed her eyes shut, bringing up implant menu options and staring at them helplessly. There must be something she could do . . . but the only options presented to her were various communications channels and of them all, only the tactical and command channels to Victor remained. The rest—fleet, logistics, Space Strike Command, personal to the other members of the team—all of them were ghosted and inaccessible.

Kelly was alone on a very large and very hostile planet.

The prisoners were filing up a ramp into the two grounded fliers now. She was too far away to recognize individuals, even when she kicked in the magnifying optics of her visor, but she could only see sixteen people, and three of those were being carried on board by trolls, as though they were injured.

Less herself and Colonel Streicher, there should have been twenty-one. Five of her comrades must have been killed in the fighting.

She wondered who had been killed.

Her eyes burned at the thought, but she would not cry. She would not lose control.

She didn't really think of the others in the command group as friends exactly. Acquaintances, comrades-at-arms and fellow soldiers and teammates, yes, but Kelly had very few friends. Friendship demanded an emotional commitment that she simply wasn't able to offer. But she still enjoyed a camaraderie with these people that had been a long time in the forging.

Sometimes, she felt that she wasn't comfortable around any other humans, but she knew now, as she watched her comrades being marched aboard those fliers at gunpoint, that she'd been close to them in a way that hadn't been possible for her with other people for a long, long time. They'd been understanding of her social failings, her clumsiness with people, as she thought of it. Even Colonel Streicher she liked well enough, though he could be a bit heavy handed, even arbitrary sometimes, like with the military rigmarole with her hair earlier that morning, and she was still burning at the way he'd treated her a little while ago on board Victor. He wasn't what she thought of as a friend—one simply didn't think of a commanding officer in those terms, generally—but she knew he cared for her professionally, the way he cared for every person under his command.

None of that mattered now. Streicher was off with Victor, and the rest of the team had been killed or captured. She was alone and in danger of being gunned down or captured herself at any moment. She didn't know what to do.

Finally, as the last of the trolls trooped aboard the transports, and the fliers lifted from the plain in swirling bursts of dust, she knew she had to call for help, even if she risked giving herself away.

"Victor!" she called. "Victor! . . ."

* * *

I am fighting for my life. 

This time, the Enemy's assault is tightly controlled and focused, his movements closely coordinated, his attacks deadly and launched with efficiency and a keen knowledge of Bolo tactics and abilities. I attempted to back clear of the ambush but found myself cut off as two of the attackers circled at high speed behind me, knocking out one of my Dragons in the process. I pivot and try a high-speed rush at one of the enemy Bolos, which I have designated as Delta Two, throwing a heavy barrage of mortar and VLS missile fire in concert with heavy 200cm Hellbore blasts. I immediately sustain heavy damage to my rear quarters as the other three close on me in a sudden rush. I find myself expending 78.5 percent of my available secondary firepower on antimissile defense, as the Enemy attempts to overwhelm my defenses with close-coordinated assault tactics. 

"Victor! Victor!" I hear the call over my tactical command channel and recognize the voice characteristics of Lieutenant Tyler. "Victor, this is . . . this is Cloudtop! Come in! Please!" 

"This is Thunderstrike, Bolo of the Line serial 837986," I reply. "This is not a good time." 

"Victor, thank God! The command ship has been overrun! The others have been killed or taken away in fliers!" 

"Unfortunately, I am unable to help just now," I reply. "Do you have the communications frequencies for the Warlock aircraft in the area?" 

"They're gone, dammit! Victor, they're all gone! There's no one left but you!" 

I hear the stress in my Commander's voice and judge that she is very close to complete physical and emotional helplessness—"losing it," as humans describe the condition. 

I have noticed with some interest that human reactions to stress and danger vary with numerous factors, including especially their age and their marital status. Younger humans tend to be both more impulsive and daring and less steady in the face of serious threat. Older humans are more conservative, less likely to take risks, but seem more relaxed with severe threats, though this likely is an effect of both training and experience. Married humans, I note, are the most conservative of all and the least willing to face serious danger. 

Kelly Tyler is unmarried and tends to be impulsive, but I have noted that she does not handle severe stress well, most likely because of her inexperience. This is a serious handicap in a battlefield commander. 

I wonder if I should report this to her commanding officer which, in this case and in the absence of Major Filby, would be Colonel Streicher. 

Doubtless this is the wrong time to discuss the matter. Both my survival and that of the entire regimental staff are in question. There will be time for such considerations later. 

"Remain where you are, my Commander," I tell her. "Stay well hidden. I will come as soon as I am able." 

"Hurry, Victor!" 

"I will do what I can. I suggest you cease communications, so that the Enemy cannot trace your transmission." 

"O-okay, Victor. Cloudtop out." 

The exchange disturbs me. Having humans directly and physically involved in combat operations in the AO can only reduce my efficiency and make it more difficult to achieve my strategic goals. Bolo combat units, after all, were introduced into the equation of purely human warfare because organic intelligence is peculiarly unable to survive or operate within the combat environment. 

I wonder if there is some means of removing them from the battlefield? 

* * *

It was almost impossible for Streicher to comprehend what was going on, even with his implant fully engaged with Victor's Combat Data Network. Direct neural interfacing should have enabled him to keep up with the Bolo's rapid movements and combat decisions, but he was having trouble following anything at all.

The view revealed on the circle of holoscreens about his chair was a constant blur of red-brown-black landscape, hurtling dust and debris, a constant, strobing cascade of explosions bright enough to dazzle the eyes even with the light input sharply tuned down for his comfort, and the shifting, geometric patterns of light Victor was drawing across the screens to indicate enemy vectors, positions, and threats.

His implant link with Victor helped a little, but the Bolo's reaction times, its thinking time was so much quicker than any human's that Streicher was having trouble keeping up.

It didn't help that the euph was still buzzing in his head, a constant distraction. It tended to push fear into the background the way it did with painful memories, and that seemed to take some of the edge off of Streicher's reactions.

"Victor," he called. "I'm having trouble with the interface. Can you boost the output at all?"

"I do not advise that, Colonel." There was a long pause. "Colonel Streicher, there appears to be a chemical blockage of some sort within your implant, at the neural receptor sites. If there is degradation of signal strength, clarity, or comprehension, I suggest that that is the cause. Boosting the signal may cause you irreparable damage."

"Do it, Victor! I can't make out a thing down here!"

"I must decline that order, Colonel. Your decision-making abilities may be impaired."

There was nothing he could do, nothing he could contribute. All he could do was clutch at the arms of the command chair and try to take it all in. Streicher sagged back in the seat, fingers clawing at the ends of the armrests. Damn, damn, damn. He should have stayed with the ship. . . .

"I have just been in communication with my Commander," the Bolo's voice said a moment later.

"Lieutenant Tyler? What'd she have to say?"

"That the command craft has been overrun. She managed to escape, but she informs me that all others of the 4th Regimental staff have been killed or taken prisoner."

The news hit Streicher like a hammerblow to the gut, shock and fear, quickly followed by a wretched guilt. If he had been there . . .

If he had been there, he would be dead or taken now as well. Nothing he personally could have done would have stopped it.

Still . . .

"Victor! Who was killed?" Carla could be a hothead sometimes and would not have gone without a fight. If she . . .

"Unknown, Colonel. Lieutenant Tyler did not inform me."

"Great. Just fracting great." His right hand strayed toward the uniform blouse pocket where he'd sequestered his last remaining euph. He stopped himself with another sharp-bitten curse. He had more back at the ship . . . but had the Caernans destroyed the ship? This might be his last tab. The last tab ever.

And then the crash hit him. Face it, Streicher, he told himself bitterly. If you hadn't been on euph, would you have insisted on joyriding with the Bolo? 

He didn't want to accept that statement, didn't want to even think about it, but he was enough a creature of discipline to know when a thing had to be faced. He remembered his confrontation moments before with Lieutenant Tyler, how he'd walked right over her objections. He remembered the surge of almost righteous self-confidence and realized that that had been the euph speaking, not him.

If he'd stayed behind, would anything have been different?

Impossible to say. He didn't have enough information. Maybe he could have mustered the others in a defense of the ship, rallied them enough to . . .

Damn! That was the euph speaking too.

He was going to have to do some serious thinking about this.

If he survived the next few minutes. . . .

 

Interlude III

At this juncture in the battle, a balance of sorts was established. The Aetryx had achieved complete mastery of cis-Caernan space to within approximately 5,000 kilometers of the planet. They could not approach near orbital space, however, for the simple fact that some fifty Bolos now operational at various points around the planet's habitable belt possessed firepower sufficient to keep them at bay. Mark XXXIIIs were quite appropriately known as planetary siege units, not least because they could effectively engage targets in space.

But they were land-bound, and their range was limited. So long as the Aetryx carriers were in operation, no supplies could reach the units already grounded, no reinforcements would arrive, and there could be no hope of evacuation should things go wrong.

And things were going wrong, and badly. Casualties among the Bolos in the initial assault forces had been unexpectedly high, thanks to the Aetryx willingness to employ nuclear weapons even over surface population centers. At the antipodes of the fighting in Kanthuras, only one battalion out of three survived the landing in the heavily forested Jorass District. Of the two surviving Bolos, familiarly known as "Thunder" and "Storm," Thunder was disabled in a duel with twenty heavy hovertanks mounting 100cm Hellbores, and Storm was forced to withdraw. Storm later returned in an attempt to rescue its comrade, and both combat units were destroyed by a concentrated nuclear strike.

Elsewhere, enemy pressures halted or repulsed repeated Confederation attacks in the early hours of the fighting. Aetryx military forces were considerably stronger than Confederation intelligence sources had expected, and casualties were high on both sides.

Completely unexpected was the ferocity of Caernan human elements in the defense of their world. Intelligence had expected them to rally to the side of their Confederation liberators, but their response was feeble and in places nonexistent. The fact that they obviously felt they were literally fighting on the side of the gods had been overlooked by invasion planners, despite warnings to that effect from planetary intelligence sources. There were reports of large numbers of unmodified humans attempting to charge Confederation Bolos armed with nothing but hand weapons and explosive charges.

All such assaults were repulsed easily, but the psychology of those attacks did not accord well with initial estimates of the psychological situation on Caern. The Caern invasion failed in large part because Confederation planners understood neither the biology nor the psychology of their opponents.

 

Disaster at Caern: 

A Study of the Unexpected in Warfare 

Galactic Press Productions, Primus, cy 426

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed