The attack begins as I approach the target area. Soldiershuman soldiers and not the troll-variants described by Lieutenant Tyler or our briefing downloadsemerge from heat-shielded holes well-hidden in the underbrush and among stands of younger, smaller trees, emerge in a sudden rush and charge my tracks and wheels, swinging make-shift satchels of high explosives with short-burning chemical fuses. Tossed into my tracks, the first one detonated with a blast powerful enough to kill several of the nearest attackers, though it had no effect on my tracks or road wheels.
My moral inhibitor subroutines block the automated response of my antipersonnel batteries, giving them time to launch one assault. I override the inhibitors, however, and batteries on both sides and in my rear begin triggering automatically, loosing volley after volley of flechette-clouds, point-defense lasers, and explosive shotgun blasts of ball bearings. I hear the shrieks as men and women die, literally shredded by my AP defenses.
I feel what can only be described as unsettled emotions at this. These are humans, the beings we are here to rescue. More than that, though, their attack bespeaks a fanaticism born of belief, dedication, and determination not to allow us to winscarcely the reactions one would expect of slaves seeking emancipation.
I detect other soldiers moving through the woods, some fully human, others in the heavy, outsized armor that marks them as trolls.
These attackers do not pose a threat, serious or otherwise. I estimate that the total explosive power of their hand-delivered satchel charges is insufficient to crack a tread connection, dislodge a road wheel, or otherwise interfere with my suspension and track system.
Still, I must kill those who get too close, if only to set an example and keep others, perhaps with more effective firepower, at a distance.
I wonder why they are so willing to die, in stacks three-deep, for their masters.
They dragged Carla into a small and bare-walled room already crowded with trolls, with humans . . . and with others. It was her first close look at Aetryx in something other than a simulation.
There were three of them, each different from the others in coloration and in overall form. Vaguely spiderlike, their heavy bodiesblack-furred, not chitinousheld well off the floor by six muscular and thick-set legs, with a lesser pair of limbs which appeared to serve as arms neatly folded beneath the head, they reminded her somewhat of the six-legged walkers that had been present when the command craft had been overrun. The facesall mandibles and palps and compound eyeswere more like those of insects than spiders or anything else that Carla knew from experience.
One of the Aetryx present was a diplomat form, with an elongated body that gave it a centaur-look, with a disturbingly human face riding where the insect features were in the other two. To Carla's mind, it was undeniably the most horrible of the three, especially when it smiled as a pair of trolls lashed her spread-eagled and helpless to an upright framework at one end of the room.
She was nightmarishly aware of all eyes on her, human and nonhuman alike. Stripped of her uniform at the ship, hanging there as though on display, she was wearing little now but shoes, socks, and underwear, and for the first time since her capture, she felt sexually vulnerable, as well as physically. The Aetryx scarcely counted, and the trolls appeared sexless. The full-humans in the room, however, were all males, and all seemed, to her mind, to be leering at her with a sense of anticipation, of expectation that made her stomach turn.
Most were watching her, at any rate. One human with a long white coat was preparing some sort of apparatus, like a crown or heavy tiara, trailing a dozen cables as thick as her thumb, and he seemed totally absorbed in that task. He turned, facing her, and settled it over her head. It felt warm to the touch, and she wondered if that was because electricity ran through it, or because it had been worn moments ago by Filby.
"Where is Major Filby?" she demanded.
The two spider-Aetryx chittered, a gobbling warble of sound impossible for human vocal chords to shape. The Diplomat's smile widened. She had the feeling that the thing didn't really have the proper hang of smiling like a human, though. The expression was more grimace than grin. "Major Filby is well," the Diplomat said. Its voice was low, almost pleasant, but with a hint of an accent she couldn't place. "You need not fear for that one. He is with others of your kind now."
Others of his kind? Had he been returned to the cell? Or did the creature mean something else?
"What is it you want?" she asked.
None of the others answered. She became aware, however, that much of the attention in the room was focused not on her, but on a three-dimensional display above a metal table at the other side of the room. She saw there, briefly illuminated in pale light, her own head, which turned transparent, revealing her brain and, aglow in yellow and green, her implants. They seemed to be studying her cerebral hardware.
A young man seated beside the table wore what looked like some sort of uniform, gray and brown with an oddly shaped red patch on his breast. A technician was placing a second crown on his head, one identical to the one she now wore.
"I'm Major Carla Ramirez," she said, confused and a little desperate at the fact that they weren't talking to her. "Confederation Army, Serial KB 5833-363-376."
She sensed power building in the machine.
"I'm Major Carla Ramirez!" She was shouting now. "Confederation Arm"
There was a flash, not of light, but within her, within the confines of her skull. It was accompanied, not by the expected pain but by a kind of inner jolt, one that dragged on for what felt like minutes but in fact must have been a mere handful of seconds.
The man at the table must have experienced a similar jolt. He blinked his eyes, leaning back, his hands clenching and unclenching before him. "I am . . . she is Major Carla Ramirez," he said with a rough voice. "Executive Officer of the 4th Regiment, Second Brigade, First Confederation Mobile Army Corps."
"Why is she here?" the Diplomat asked the Caern human. The skin of its face was as blue-black as that of the protosome Aetryx and looked shiny and plastic in the pale light.
"I'm here . . . She's here as part of Operation Thunderstrike, the invasion of Caern."
"And the purpose of Thunderstrike?"
"To free the humans held in slavery by the Aetryx. To open new markets for Daimon Interstellar and other Confederation corporations interested in the human market potential of Caern. . . ."
Carla listened with dawning horror as the Diplomat continued to question the young Caernan, and as the man replied fully and completely to each question with information she could only assume had been drawn directly from her own memory.
It could be done, of course. She'd heard of experiments along those lines. With implant technology, a person's memories, her thought matrices, certain aspects of her personality could all be patterned and downloaded. For a time, once, there'd been talk about eventually downloading people's minds, either into robots or custom-grown organic bodies. The idea had never caught on, of course, because, obviously, what was downloaded was a copy, not the original mind.
Immortality was appealing only if it applied to one's self, not to a kind of technological offspring, a stranger who happened to have your mind and memories.
The Aetryx apparently could do just that, however. Her memories, at the very least, had been copied and transferred to the mind of the man sitting at the table. Obviously, his own mind and training were still part of him, since he seemed to be in control. It was as though her memories had simply been tacked on, somehow, to his, in such a way that he could go through her memories at will.
"Tell us of her commanding officer," the Diplomat was saying. That snapped her awareness back to the here and now.
"Colonel Streicher," the man with the crown replied. "Commander of the 4th Regiment. He appears to be a pretty decent CO. Good strategy . . . good tactics . . . although she's been worried about him lately. He's been a bit erratic." The man hesitated, then looked up at Carla, the first time he'd made eye contact with her. "Well, well! It seems they have a relationship, this one and the colonel! They're lovers. She's still feeling it from their lovemaking a few hours ago. . . ."
Carla struggled against the plastic restraints pinning her wrists and ankles. "Bastards! . . ."
She'd expected to be grilled on Bolo capabilities, invasion targets, and TO&Es. This, however, was a far more personal attack, a rape of mind as violating, as disgusting, in some ways, as physical rape. Not that Aetryx would be at all interested in human sex.
"Where is the colonel now?" the Diplomat asked.
"Apparently . . . apparently he's on board one of the Bolos. Its working name is Victor . . . it's the combat unit that was operating northwest of Ghendai. She doesn't know where it is now, but she believes it may be coming after her."
"The white-garbed hero of legend, come to rescue his lady fair?" The Diplomat smiled unpleasantly. "Not likely in this case, Carla. Your Bolos cannot reach us here."
"The invasion has been crushed," she said. She hated making that admission, but she knew she had to explore other possibilities. "You know that. Maybe we should be talking about a cessation of hostilities."
"Are you surrendering?" the Diplomat asked with a surprised lift of his eyebrows. He seemed to have a wide range of human facial expressions down quite well, but it was still eerily distracting to see that face attached to that body. "It seems to me you are already our prisoner. That leaves you without much say in the matter."
"I'm talking about a cessation of all hostilities," she replied, a little unsteadily. "I'm talking about ordering all of the Bolos up there to stop their attacks."
She wasn't even sure she had the right to suggest that. Who was the highest-ranking commander in-theater?
With a small shock, she realized that it might be her. She didn't know of any regimental or brigade commanders who'd reached Caern's surface, other than Jon, and the rest were either killed in the sneak attack in space, or fled into hyper. Jon Streicher was the ranking officer, and he was out of touch right now.
Could she open peace talks without consulting with him? Or was that a decision only Jon could make? She was scared, and she wasn't sure where to draw the boundaries in her command responsibilities.
"She doesn't have the authority to bargain with us," the crowned soldier said. "According to what I'm getting here, that would probably be Streicher. The CO of the whole invasion is a General Moberly, and he's either dead or gone, with the fleet."
Damn them. They had access to her memories, her knowledge, but were apparently able to bypass the emotions, the fear and the desperation, that were obscuring things for her.
He was right, of course. . . .
"Well, if what you say about her relationship with Streicher is true," the Diplomat said, "maybe we have a hold on him as well." He twittered something at the two Aetryx protosomes, then added, "Put her with the others."
She scarcely noticed as a pair of trolls removed the crown and its tangle of cables from her head, then unfastened her wrists and ankles and helped her down from the restraint frame.
"Thank you, Major," the Diplomat said, still smiling. "Your information will be most helpful. Most helpful indeed!"
They were still questioning the Caernan with her memories as they led her from the room.
The Enemy launches another attack, a rush by unarmored troops using short-range shoulder-fired rocket launchers and satchel charges of explosives.
I cannot depress the muzzle of my primary weapons enough to hit them, and, in any case, my AP pods are sufficient to negate the threat. However, my reserves of AP expendables are running low, and I sense that they are using human wave tactics in an attempt to deplete my ammunition.
In response, I loose several quick rounds of 200cm Hellbore fire above their heads. The concussion, noise, and thermal blast kill or stun dozens of them and leave the others clawing for cover at the earth as I race past. As I approach the objective area, I come under direct attack from three separate turreted bunkers mounting 130cm Hellbores, as well as heavy armor well-hidden in the forest. As Hellbore fire crashes and thunders among the trees, setting the forest ablaze, I smash my way forward to a deep ravine, wide enough to admit my breadth, deep enough to give me shelter as I move north past the entrenched hard points. Humans scramble for safety, trying to climb the walls of the gully as I race through at high speed. A few make it. . . .
Emerging 26.13 seconds later from the gully 523 meters from my entry point, I detect multiple air targets, incoming, at ranges varying from five to twelve kilometers. Two appear to be strike aircraft, while four are IRBM surface-to-surface missiles. I trace the missiles' exhaust trails, identifying a probable launch site in the northern reaches of the Kanthurian Mountains. I also scan all six targets for neutrino flux, neutron emissions, and gamma radiation and determine that the missiles possess low-yield kiloton-range fission warheads, while the aircraft, themselves nuclear-powered, may be carrying small nuclear weapons as well, either air-to-ground missiles or gravity bombs with tactical warheads.
I am again surprised and disturbed at the Enemy's casual escalation to nuclear weapons in this conflict. True, nuclear weaponry provides him with his best chance of breaching my defenses, but Bolos mounting 200cm Hellbores would be as effective and far more surgical, allowing the destruction of invading combat units without laying waste to entire cities and geographical regions.
In terms of delivering a force package sufficient to breach my defenses, the Enemy's Mark XXXII Bolos offer a much better opportunity for my destruction. Missiles and aircraft are, of necessity, lightly armored, depending on speed, stealth, and maneuverability to close with their target and deliver their weaponry.
I track the targets for another .25 second, then open fire with my primary weapons. All six targets disintegrate completely in mid-air within 1.62 second of one another.
An additional barrage of Hellbore blasts directed at the bunker-mounted Hellbore turrets tells me that Invictus has arrived in this operational area. I join my firepower to his, and together we knock out all three of the enemy emplacements.
By this time, the unarmored ground forces, those not killed outright, have scattered and fled. I note from seismic readings that this area is honeycombed by interconnecting tunnels, many of them only human-sized. I will not be able to penetrate these, obviously, though I possess firepower enough, if necessary, to blast away layer upon layer of dirt and bedrock to expose at least the upper layers of tunnels and destroy them.
For the moment, that action represents a relatively unproductive, even pointless application of my firepower, especially since I would still need a team of either hunter-killer robots or human engineers and tunnel warfare experts to penetrate the tunnel system to any worthwhile tactical extent.
Working together, Invictus and I determine the location of the main Bolo entrance to the underground tunnel complex. He fires a series of mortar rounds, impacting along the circumference of a circle two kilometers across. By measuring the seismic waves traveling through the ground, both in speed and in amplitude, I can build a three-dimensional picture of subsurface anomalies in ground density, including both the presence of massive support structures and of large excavated areas.
We pinpoint the main entrance in the side of a hill 215 meters from my current position, close to the center of the triangle formed by the three now-silenced bunkers.
The entire region is thoroughly ablaze now. The plant forms native to Caern that fill the niche for trees tend to be tall, slender and flexible, with bushy crowns consisting of leaves like long, slender feathers, colored gold and red. Their large surface area and low density makes them susceptible to fire, and they tend to burn readily and quickly. The brief firefight in this area has ignited most of the plant life for several kilometers around, and the firestorm is growing as potentially destructive and dangerous as those generated by Hellbore fire at the fringes of the cities. My outer hull temperature climbs to nearly 400 degrees Celsius as I move toward the tightly sealed tunnel entrance. Fortunately, the temperature is well within my design tolerances, and the fire only serves to scatter any remaining human soldiers hiding in the area.
I can see the tunnel entrance now using ground-penetrating radar, a slab of duralloy nearly eighty meters wide and fifty high, set into a steep hillside, angled back into the rock. I fire several Hellbore bursts and note that the door is field-shielded, with a buried superconducting mesh designed to absorb and shunt excess energy to hidden, underground reserve capacitors.
My programmed instinct is to attempt to open the tunnel door electronically and continue the pursuit. However, this would take the battle onto ground of the Enemy's choosing and might well prove to be a trap.
I will need orders from one of my commanders to proceed.
Colonel Streicher sat on the metal-mesh deck and stared at the blue pill in his outstretched hand. He wanted it.
He needed it.
It was his very last euph, and he felt now as though he would crumble without it.
He knew he'd already surpassed the allowable dosage during the past several hours. One euphtwo at the mostshould have kept him going for twelve hours.
None of that mattered as he stared at the gloriously sky-blue pellet in his palm.
If he took it, the tension, the terrible, devouring stress would leave him, and he would again be able to make coherent decisions.
If he took it, he would have none left.
"Colonel?"
None left, until he could get back to the command craft.
"Colonel!"
"Huh? What?"
"I said, `Vic needs your go-ahead to enter the underground passageway!' "
He hadn't even realized that Lieutenant Tyler had been speaking. She was sitting in the command chair, hands braced on the chair arms, half swiveled toward him so she could meet his eyes. She looked worried, and he wondered if she'd seen the pill and knew what it was.
Carefully, he dropped the bright blue euph back into his uniform tunic pocket and carefully sealed the pocket flap. Later. . . .
"Go," was all he said.
At my Commander's word, I open fire again on the tunnel entrance. For 3.5 seconds, the shielded doorway stubbornly resists the full energy output of all three of my primary Hellbores, reflecting or absorbing a torrent equivalent to fifteen megatons of energy per second. The thunder of the discharge echoes from the mountainside, and my hull, already hot from the surrounding forest fire, grows hotter still at the touch of the reflected thermal energy.
My 200cm barrels begin to overheat, and I cease fire. Radar and seismic data indicates that the barrier is a laminate of duralloy, superconducting ceramics, and ceramplast at least eight meters thick. At this rate, it will take approximately 5.47 hours to burn through, allowing for cool-down time after every three-second period of operation.
As I wait, I attempt to trace the barrier's electrical system, sending low-voltage induction pulses through the buried wiring and attempting to reach and circumvent the locking or door-triggering mechanism. It appears to be a system of simple design, responding to a coded radio signal. It may be possible for me to break the code, especially if I can access the Enemy's computer network or security system through the wiring.
I estimate that it will take approximately 3.17 hours to crack the code using brute-force trial-and-error.
Neither approach is satisfactory. The Enemy will be mustering all possible defenses in this area as swiftly as he can. I do not have three hours.
There is, however, a possible alternative. . . .
"He wants to do what?" Streicher sounded shocked.
Kelly Tyler closed her eyes. What the hell was wrong with the colonel? "There is a wrecked enemy Bolo just outside of Ghendai," she said again. "One of the first enemy Bolos he knocked out. He says that the machine's AI core may be intact. He doesn't have the tools to access it, but he says we may be able to, under his direction."
"Yes, but why?"
"He thinks he can talk to it," she replied. "He thinks it may have things like the code to open that door out there, or maybe even infiltrate the enemy's computer net."
"You mean, passwords? Stuff like that?"
She nodded. "Yes, sir. It's better than trying to kick the door down, anyway."
"How long will that take?"
"Another hour, maybe an hour and a half to reach the wreckage and retrieve the AI core. He doesn't know how long it will take to get the information. He . . . he says that will depend on how well we can follow directions."
Streicher considered this. He didn't like taking orders from a machine, but he had to admit that the Bolo was exhibiting a damn sight more sense than he was, right now.
"Invie is already here," Kelly continued. "Roxie is about thirty minutes away. They can keep the bad guys bottled up, while we go retrieve the goods."
"Okay," he said. "Let's do it."
He felt Victor's rocking motion and deep-rumbling track-thunder as it swung about and accelerated southwest almost before the words were out of his mouth.
They didn't take Carla back to the cell. They led her through a different set of corridors, up a freight lift, and into a broad, high-ceilinged hall with dusty sunlight filtering through skylights far overhead. For a horrifying few minutes, she could only assume that they were taking her someplace to dispose of herthey didn't need her anymore, after all, if they had her memories.
Her shackles were removed and she was prodded into a large room with perhaps thirty other people already there, all human, all as raggedly undressed as she was.
Filby was there, sprawled on a cot against one wall, apparently no worse for the ordeal than she was. The rest of the people, though, appeared to be civilians.
A strikingly handsome woman of perhaps forty-five standard greeted her. "You're safe" were her first words. "I'm Tami Morrigen."
"Carla Ramirez," she replied, a little unsteadily. "Confederation Army."
The others were crowding closer, now. "The invasion!" one older man, his hair shot through with silver, exclaimed. "What's happening? Who's winning?"
"Not us, I'm afraid."
Shock and dismay ran through the crowd. "No!"
"Gods!"
"What happened?"
"Your friend over there wouldn't tell us. . . ."
"We landed in force," she told them. "Bolo heavies. But they managed to ambush our fleet and drove it off. My group was in a spacecraft that was damaged and forced to land. As far as I know, there are a bunch of Bolos still on the offensive up there, but they, we, are all alone now."
"Don't tell them everything!" Filby called from his cot. He was sitting up, now, glaring at her. "Damn it, we don't know if this isn't all some sort of trick! A way to pump us for information!"
"They've already done that, Major," she told him. "Literally. Or didn't you notice?"
He waved his hand. "A trick. Some sort of trick. They're playing mind games with us, Major, don't you get it?" Filby's voice was unsteady, and he had an unpleasant glitter in his eye. Too many shocks, she thought, hitting him too fast.
"Easy, Filby . . ."
"They're not slaves!" Filby shouted. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. "Don't you see? They told us the Caernans were slaves, and the Caernans are fighting against us! We can't trust any of them! . . ."
"Actually, we're all offworlders here," the red-haired man said. "We've considered Caern our home for the past five years, but we never did really fit in with the locals." He extended a hand. "I'm Sym Redmond. Senior factor of Daimon Interstellar. These are all my people."
They formally touched hands, in standard Confederation greeting. "A pleasure, sir," she said. "I've heard of you." The pre-invasion briefings had mentioned that there was a small population of traders on Caern, that Sym Redmond was the leader of a trade consortium on the planet.
Redmond and his people, in fact, were the primary source of information on local conditions and politics used by Army Intelligence in preparing for the invasion.
Perhaps the native human Caernans didn't want or need rescuing, but these people certainly did. Too bad the Confederation strike force was no longer in a position to do anything about it.
"Is this your whole group?" she asked. The briefings had mentioned several hundred offworlders.
"All of the ones I was responsible for, the ones in Ghendai. We were in the process of getting our things together and evacuating when we were all rounded up together, outside the city. There were plenty of other offworlders on-planet elsewhere. Kanth. Ledelefen. Vled. Even Gethorladest, on the other side of the planet. God knows what happened to them."
"The Aetryx have actually treated us pretty well, all things considered," Tami said. "The trolls and protosome humans were actually a lot worse. Roughed us up when they took us, that sort of thing." She shuddered. "But the Aetryx have been polite, distant. Almost gentlemanly."
"What did you call the humans? Proto . . . what?"
"Protosome humans," Redmond said. "Original bodies. Here it means human beings, like you and me."
"The locals," Tami said, "have a very different view of what it means to be human."
"Maybe," Carla said, "you should fill me in."
And they proceeded to do just that.